Bachruddin Jusuf Habibie was born in 1936 in South Sulawesi. He replaced Suharto and became Indonesia’s third president, when Suharto resigned from the presidency on 21 May, 1998. A close ally of Suharto and an aeronautical engineer, Habibie was Minister for Research and Technology for twenty years during the New Order regime. He had lived in Germany for 18 years until 1974 when he was asked to return by Suharto to become Minister for Research and Technology. Appointed to head ICMI (the Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals Association) in 1990, he became Vice President to Suharto in 1997. He presided over the 1999 general elections and made the controversial decision of holding a referendum, supervised by the United Nations, in 1999 in East Timor regarding the territory’s political status. The parliament refused to accept his presidential report in October 1999 and as a result he decided not to stand again as president.

BOURCHIER, David and HADIZ, Vedi, 2003, Indonesian Society and Politics: A Reader , London and New York: Routledge-Curzon.