SUMATRA COUP

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28160, 26 December 1956, Page 7

SUMATRA COUP

Army Defies Jakarta

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright) (Rec. 8 p.m.) JAKARTA, Dec. 24. The command of the North Sumatra military district announced over Radio Medan today that it did not acknowledge the decision of the Central Government relieving the district commander, Colonel Simbolon, of his post. The Government dismissed Colonel Simbolon on Saturday after he had announced that he had taken over the administrative power of the provinces and no longer recognised the Jakarta administration.

The command’s announcement was made by a spokesman who said also that the Cabinet decision would not influence the activities of the command or sway it from its decision to dissociate itself from the Central Government.

He said also that Lieutenant-Colonel Jamin Ginting, the officer appointed by the Cabinet to take over Colonel Simbolon’s duties was one of the new administrative leaders of the province. Another officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Wahab Makmur, named by the Cabinet as an alternate who should assume command of the district if Colonel Ginting was unable to do so, had also been given an administrative post. Colonel Simbolon told reporters in Medan that in Indonesia’s 11 years of independence the living standards of the people in Sumatra had steadily deteriorated. “The Army, which was born of the revolution, could not allow this situation to drag on for ever,” he said.

He called for the reunion of President Sukarno and the former VicePresident, Dr. Mohammad Hatta, who resigned on December 1 after complaining that he had not been consulted on certain important issues. Lieutenant-Colonel Ahmad Hussein, chairman of the “Banteng Council,” a group of Army officers and veterans which took over the administrative power of Central Sumatra on Thursday, announced that the council was prepared to enter into negotiations with the Central Government.

“History in the Making” The “New York Times” said today that a better government, with a real shift to government by consent, was needed in Indonesia. The newspaper, in a leading article, said it would be a mistake to assume that the two Army uprisings in Indonesia’s most productive island, Sumatra, were mere local military coups. “The causes go deep, and the significance of what is happening may be continuing. We are watching history in the making,” it said. It had been originally planned that some sort of loose federal government with a high degree of local authority was the only political pattern that could possibly fit Indonesia—a prodigious archipelago containing more than 60 well-defined and different ethnic groups. But local autonomy had been quickly superseded by centralised government and Indonesia became a unitary state ruled from Jakarta, it said. The subsequent revolts had been virtually continuous. Two communities in the Celebes were still not entirely pacified. The South Moluccans had proclaimed their own free republic, and the Achinese, in northern Sumatra, had been in continuous resistance. “What has happened is that this

centralised government has not been able to function properly,” the “New York Times” said. “The soldiers in Sumatra took to smuggling because they were not being paid by Jakarta. The Central Government forbade the smuggling but could not supply the payrolls. “A better government must be evolved in Indonesia. One Cabinet resignation will not answer the problem. There must be a shift to greater authority, to real government by consent. President Sukarno’s guided democracy is obviously misguided. Something more is required.”