If the Asian Crisis was an accident, Indonesia must be the worst casualty. From 1 July 1997 to its lowest point in June 1998, the Indonesian rupiah fell 85 percent against the U.S. dollar, much more than the Thai baht (56 percent), the Korean won (55 percent) and the Malaysian ringgit (48 percent) at their respective worst points. Furthermore, in 1998 Indonesian GDP fell 13.1 percent, the worst Asian decline compared with Thailand (10.5 percent), Malaysia (7.4 percent) or South Korea (6.9 percent).

The Indonesian tragedy is that it was the Asian crisis shocks that exposed a banking crisis that in turn precipitated a political crisis that ultimately led to the end of President Suharto's 32 years of rule on 21 May 1998. The country's IMF programmes, officially initiated on 8 October 1997, ended nine years later following Indonesia's early repayment of all its debts to the Fund in October 2006, but not before four Indonesian Presidents had come and gone.

Above all, it was the Indonesian people who suffered the most from this tragedy. I first visited Indonesia in the mid-1970s when it was still very poor. Indonesia is my favourite country to visit because of its long history, diverse culture and the fact that I admired how the nation steadily grew out of poverty.