New regard for Indonesia’s founder

Press, 19 August 1985, Page 20

New regard for Indonesia’s founder

By

LEIGH MACKAY,

of AAP, in Jakarta

Sukarno, Indonesia’s flamboyant first president who was officially disgraced following a bloody coup attempt, is being discreetly rehabilitated by the Suharto regime which toppled him.

was, and to a large extent still is, a powerful cult hero to millions of Indonesia’s poor, particularly in Java. They revere him for ending Dutch colonialism, for his electrifying oratory, and for his close identification with the downtrodden and with Javanese mystical belief.

His renewed respectability is limited and politically motivated, according to foreign and local observers including Indonesia’s pre-eminent soldier and sometime critic of the Government, a retired general, Abdul Haris Nasution.

Fifteen years after his death at 69 from a chronic kidney complaint, his image still abounds in homes, shops, mosques, even on stickers in Jakarta’s taxis. Villagers setting offerings before his tomb in East Java intentionally ignore a Government notice forbidding “worship” at the site. For the Suharto Government, Sukarno is the misguided political adventurer who presided over economic chaos, flirted with communism, and failed to deal effectively with a communist-backed coup attempt — 20 years ago this September — which Suharto decisively crushed. Muslims, the army, and many amongst the urban middle class and intelligentsia (not to mention neighbours such as Australia and Malaysia) applauded or at least did not object when Suharto’s followers stripped Sukarno of his 23-year-old presidency in 1968 and placed it on Suharto’s shoulders. Since then, the Government has discouraged public homage to the magnetic personality who gave Indonesia its identity and placed it on the world stage. Jakarta’s streets bear the names of most nationalist leaders except Sukarno. His name was rarely mentioned last April when African and Asian delegates gathered in Bandung, south of here, to com-

For older Indonesians, the rehabilitation seems fitting, now that the nation is commemorating the 40th anniversary of the bold declaration of independence by Sukarno and Mohammed Hatta, later his vice-president. The hastily handwritten declaration, read aloud by Sukarno outside his Jakarta home, on what is now Proclamation Street, on August 17, 1945, was one of the shortest in history. “We, the Indonesian people, herewith proclaim the independence of Indonesia. All matters pertaining to the transfer of power, etc., will be carried out in the shortest possible time. On behalf of the Indonesian people, (signed) Sukarno, Hatta.”

The Japanese occupation forces were just learning with shock of their country’s surrender. The Dutch who had exploited these “Netherlands East Indies” for more than 300 years were preparing to reclaim their colony. Establishing Sukarno’s place in official histories is a delicate task for President Suharto’s “new order” Government.

This “bearer of the sufferings of the people” as he styled himself

memorate the 30th anniversary of the historic 1955 Bandung conference which Sukarno staged. Sukarno’s role in creating and articulating ideals that still underpin Suharto’s Indonesia is rarely acknowledged officially. They include a secular rather than an Islamic State (Indonesia is predominantly Muslim), international non-alignment, and the State ideology or pancasila (the five principles of belief in “the one god,” humanitarianism, consensual democracy, social justice, and national unity). Now the Government’s attitude is softening, but only selectively. It built his tomb in 1979, later erected a monument to Sukarno and Hatta, and recently named Jakarta’s new international airport after both men. The Sukarno-Hatta combination indicates that Sukarno is becoming respectable as the fervent patriot who endured 10 years in exile by the Dutch and led the fledgling nation through a bloody guerrilla war against them from 1945-49. Still taboo is Sukarno the selfproclaimed Muslim Marxist, who virtually declared war on Malaysia, alarmed Australia and Western onlookers with his table-thumping, anti-Western rhetoric, and left the nation bankrupt and in political turmoil. “This selective rehabilitation is, I think, mainly to counterbalance Islamic critics by winning the support of those who revered Sukarno and resented his downfall,” said General Nasution, a Sumatran-born Muslim.

“The Government needs this support. By making Pancasila (which

guarantees freedom of worship and prohibits Muslim, domination of the State) the sovereign principle, even for Muslim groups, the Government is being criticised for supposedly subordinating religion to Pancasila.” General Nasution, aged 66, led the guerrilla campaign against the Dutch and served in many distinguished posts under Sukarno, including Defence Minister and armed forces chief from 1959-66. He was chairman of the Provisional People’s Consultative Assembly which replaced Sukarno with Suharto in 1968.

Another leading nationalist, a former Foreign Minister and close aide of Sukarno’s, Dr Ruslan Abdulgani, believes Sukarno is now useful in the Government’s drive to revive nationalistic idealism to face economic and social difficulties on the horizon.

“The proclamation earlier this year of an annual ‘national awakening day’ is part of this,” he told A.A.P. Dr Abdulgani, aged 71, spearheads the promotion of Pancasila in compulsory courses for schools, Government workers and professionals. Summarising Sukarno’s “positive” side, General Nasution said it was “obviously his persistence in fighting for independence and building and unifying a young nation.

“On the negative side, he liked ‘yes-men’ around him, he could be extremely arrogant and vain — which he admitted — and he badly miscalculated in believing it was necessary to unite with communist forces.

“As he got older, his reasoning powers diminished. He saw himself as a saviour and became more authoritarian.”

Dr Abdulgani agreed. "He also let himself be glorified by the people, and overglorification makes a man weak. “I and many others warned him against getting too close to the communists and Peking, but he believed he was so popular he could outmanoeuvre them. He would boast that he could influence the masses more than the P.K.I. (Indonesian Communist Party, outlawed by Suharto). Dr Abdulgani believes Sukarno allowed himself to be deposed, rather than risk plunging the nation into civil war by urging his followers to oppose Suharto’s group. “I think Sukarno was not playing for time to emerge again after 1965. His apparent lack of resistance to the military who took over came from his knowledge that, if he challenged the military, there would be a terrible clash, possibly civil war.”

Like a hero he admired in the popular Javanese Wayang (shadow puppet theatre), Kumbokarno, Sukarno chose to let go with dignity and not jeopardise the unity he had created, Dr Abdulgani said. Sukarno fascinated Westerners who dealt with him and academics chronicling the nation’s progress. More than a half dozen volumes of biography and reminiscences have appeared in English alone, several by Australians. Some dwell on his personality, his reputation for sexual prowess, and the magic powers and direct contact with Javanese spirits which ordinary Javanese were convinced he possessed. These elements often dominated his speeches which by turns were earthy and romantic, erudite and practical. The flavour of Sukarno’s style comes out in a much-quoted Independence Day speech in 1963, devoted to condemning the creation of Malaysia. “We do not wish to be a satellite. We do not wish to become a nation of ducks ... of sheep. We want to be a nation all-powerful, hospitable and fertile, ordered, peaceful, and prosperous through diligence, with muscles of wire and bones of iron, invulnerable to the blow of the blacksmith’s hammer, to the slash of the sharpened knife.” Such a speech would strike chords amongst the still nationalistic Indonesian populace today as it did then, local and foreign observers said.

Although Australia backed Indonesian independence, playing midwife to the nation’s birth in the United Nations, relations later faltered over Sukarno’s hostility to Malaysia, his claim to Dutch New Guinea (now Irian Jaya Province), and his anti-Western, pro-Peking stance.

“Sukarno’s assertive, flamboyant, adventurist foreign policies were certainly counterproductive,” the Indonesian Foreign Minister, Dr Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, told A.A.P.

“Now we are concerned with regional development and. reconstruction, creating an environment in which Indonesia can develop. We are no longer trying to change the world.”