(Updates story first issued on Jan 16)

By Bill Tarrant

SINGAPORE, Jan 27 (Reuters) - As Indonesia's former autocratic president Suharto lay gasping for life this month, authoritarian figures from neighbouring countries hurried to his bedside to whisper words of encouragement.

Mahathir Mohamad, the 82-year-old former prime minister of Malaysia whose time in office overlapped Suharto's for nearly two decades, visited on Jan. 14, as did the Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah, 61.

A day earlier, Singapore's founding father and first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, 84, was at Suharto's bedside.

Suharto's death, which came on Sunday, marks the passing of an era in Southeast Asia.

Suharto, Mahathir and Lee were in power when countries in the region were growing so strongly they were being touted by the World Bank as the "East Asia Miracle", an achievement in which individual liberty took a back seat to economic development.

They can thank Suharto, 86, for being instrumental in bringing the stability that allowed the region to grow.

"Why are all these old guys rushing to his bedside? He brought stability to Indonesia and he brought stability to the neighbourhood and that's something for which they are very thankful," Michael Vatikiotis, author of "Indonesian Politics Under Suharto", said before the strongman's death.

"And it's unquestioned he brought that stability. You can argue the corruption and repression, but you can't argue about that," Vatikiotis said.

CONFRONTATION

Suharto's 32 years as president of the world's fourth-most populous country, a key supplier of primary commodities and straddling strategic sea lanes, was a mostly placid era of growth and political stability that came at a cost of brutal suppression of dissent and almost unprecedented corruption.

Things were far different when Suharto came to power after crushing a botched coup in 1965 blamed on the communist party.

Sukarno, Indonesia's mercurial first president, had declared a "Confrontation" against Malaysia in 1964, which then included Singapore along with the Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak.

Sukarno believed all of Borneo belonged to Indonesia and announced his intention to arm a million leftist peasants and workers to do battle with Malaysia. This was at the height of the Vietnam War when Washington feared nations of Southeast Asia would fall like dominoes to a communist juggernaut.

In the months after the abortive coup, Suharto set about destroying the communist party as a political force.

Bloody purges saw up to 500,000 alleged communists and sympathisers killed in one of history's worst massacres. While much of the killing was done by militias and vigilante groups, at the least Suharto's army did little to stop it.

He then opened Indonesia up to Western aid and investment.

Gen. Suharto had conducted secret negotiations to end Confrontation, deeply unpopular with the army, even before Sukarno was edged from power in 1966.

The formal end to Confrontation in August of that year paved the way for the birth of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a staunch bulwark against communism.

Today, headquartered in Jakarta, it encompasses 10 nations with a combined population of 500 million and seeks to become an EU-style community that would have diplomatic and economic heft in a globalised world.

That was almost unimaginable four decades ago.

Suharto, Mahathir and Lee were among East Asia's first generation of post-independence leaders who espoused "Asian Values". Individual liberties and human rights were subordinate to "consensual" politics and economic well-being.

These leaders saw themselves as nation-builders, throwing off the legacy of colonialism, trying to keep multi-ethnic countries from tearing apart at the seams, while creating the institutions of a modern nation state.

But while Singapore under Lee became a paragon of good governance and transparency, Suharto's Indonesia became one of the world's most corrupt countries.

The president parcelled out projects and contracts to friends and family so shamelessly it was an important factor in the 1998 student-led uprising during the Asian financial crisis.

The anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International in 2004 ranked Suharto at the top of a dubious table of kleptocrats, estimating he and his family had salted away up to $35 billion. Suharto has dismissed that as pure fiction.

Suharto was admitted to hospital on Jan. 4 suffering from anaemia and low blood pressure due to heart, lung and kidney problems. At times after that his health improved to the point where doctors suggested he might be able to go home.

But that was not to be.

On Sunday morning, his doctors said Suharto had suffered from multiple organ failure, and within hours of that news they announced his death. (Editing by Jerry Norton)

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