First Step

Once, as I was working on something connected with the technical side of administrative affairs, I fell into a reverie of thoughts, tracing my own journey in politics. At this point in my life, as the Secretary General of DPP Golkar, I was responsible for many things, including important state matters that only a few were privy to.

I reflected that my journey in politics had been a long one. What had started out as a part-time activity was now a full-time career, with me finally within the main circle of the elite in the country. If anyone asked me how I had got this far, I would not find it easy to come up with an answer.

To deal with the day-to-day business at the secretariat, Pak Dhar immediately appointed Sudarsono, an echelon II civil servant at the State Secretariat. In his capacity as the Head of the DPP Golkar Secretariat, Sudarsono and the staff he brought from his previous post managed to integrate themselves well with the existing staff, and both teams were able to work in tandem with each other.

Later on I discovered that Sudarsono had done his post-graduate studies at L’Institut International d’Administration Publique, a prestigious educational institution in France. Sudarsono was a consummate administrator and was excellent at communicating with others. He always came on top as well in various training workshops held by the state administration agency.

When I became State Minister for the Environment in 1993, I appointed him Secretary of the Ministry of the Environment. Pak Dhar, who was then former Vice-President, was surprised by my choice of Sudarsono. There was another side of Sudarsono that Pak Dhar had not had an opportunity to see, which was his intellectual capability. Apparently, while he was at the State Secretariat, Sudarsono managed to hide his superior intelligence from everyone else.

Soeharto's Man

My political journey for the last two decades had led me to rub shoulders with Indonesia's top politicians. If I could just create the map, it would be very interesting. I often found myself pondering on what General Benny Moerdani and Moerdiono told me.