The Example Of Sutan Sjahrir: 1909-1966
Plastrik, Stanley
On April 19, 250,000 Indonesians paid public homage to the memory of Sutan Sjahrir, the Sumatra-born socialist leader of the early Indonesian Republic and its first premier. He had spent...
...Sjahrir opposed Sukarno's expansionist, anti-Malaysian policy, a piece of braggadocio calculated to distract attention from the chaos of the Indonesian economy...
...and he was undermining, as well, the local autonomy of the various Indonesian islands, while establishing Javanese domination...
...It is not a matter of uncritically accepting everything Sjahrir said or did: he too made mistakes...
...Sjahrir believed in the validity of Western political and cultural values as these would be adapted to an Indonesian context...
...Perhaps enthusiasm for dictators like Sukarno, Nkrumah and Nasser will be lessened, or at least complicated...
...But soon it became clear that they were utterly different in spirit and quality...
...Sustained in power by the Indonesian Communists, as well as by his own wing of the nationalist movement, Sukarno proceeded to imprison not only Sjahrir but also such other leaders of early Indonesian nationalism as Mohammed Hatta, Asaat, and Sastrosatomo...
...He had spent the last four years of his life as a prisoner of President Sukarno, that sinister, aging buffoon, because he had opposed the authoritarian spirit of Sukarno's "guided democracy...
...But it does begin to seem that the day of the authoritarian demagogue—the Sukarno, the Nkrumah— is coming to an end...
...The struggle was obviously uneven, for Sjahrir's rational intelligence could not compete with Sukarno's "nationalist" demagogy...
...Meanwhile, two observations: First, the enormous turn-out for Sjahrir's funeral suggests that even in countries stripped of freedom, social memory is stronger than is commonly supposed...
...A few weeks later he died in a Swiss hospital...
...The country was demoralized and corrupted in the name of "guided democracy...
...Sjahrir believed in representative government and free political parties—not simply in order to ape the West, but because he was devoted in principle to the idea of liberty, and because he understood that free institutions would be needed to meet the requirements of a state that consists of thousands of islands, hundreds of different ethnic groups, scores of languages, and dozens of cultures and religions...
...It is much too soon to say that the day of Sjahrir has arrived—the day of colonial independence based on the ideals of democratic socialism...
...Secondly, we should like to recommend to some of the younger American radicals, especially those who maintain a close interest in the "Third World," that they look into the life and work of Sutan Sjahrir...
...But surely there ought to be some moral drawn from the fact that uncompromising figures in countries like Indonesia understood that national freedom, socialism and democracy are inseparable goals, linked values...
...We can only hope that with time and a return to Sjahrir's spirit of conciliation, Indonesia will find a way out of its turmoil and bloodshed...
...What Sukarno was in practice doing, amidst all his chatter about opposing neo-colonialism, was to destroy the democratic processes the Indonesians themselves had already established...
...Sjahrir, by contrast, sought a solution to the problem of unifying Indonesia's disparate peoples, along the lines of India's Congress and Socialist movements—and by contrast to the Chinese methods of centralized overlordship, as in Tibet...
...He fought, in vain, against Sukarno's notion of the "unitary state"—later to be used by "Bung Karno" as an excuse for employing the army in a series of wars at the edges of the Indonesian archipelago...
...The recent terrible slaughter of the Communists in Indonesia, a pogrom for which there can be no justification or defense, does not suggest to us that national reconciliation or tolerance is yet in prospect...
...he opposed the mindless xenophobia which Sukarno made into his special mark and which is often a prop for the authoritarianism that has followed the independence of certain new nations...
...How bitter a commentary the parallel careers of Sjahrir and Sukarno form upon the destiny of Indonesia...
...On April 19, 250,000 Indonesians paid public homage to the memory of Sutan Sjahrir, the Sumatra-born socialist leader of the early Indonesian Republic and its first premier...
...Both had been leaders in the nationalist movement, and when Indonesia achieved independence, the two men were for a brief moment collaborators in trying to create a new nation...
...Released in 1965, his health broken by a series of imprisonments under the Dutch, the Japanese, and then his compatriots, Sjahrir was a stricken man who had already lost his power of speech...
...They did remember, they did care...
...There were Indonesians who looked back with strong feelings to the integrity and principles of a man like Sjahrir...
Vol. 13 • July 1966 • No. 4
