Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR AFRICAN DEMOCRACY From the start, I had better state the obvious-that my views lie closer to those of Immanuel Wallerstein ("An Africanist's Reply" NL, June 10) than to those of...
...For one American academic to "explain" why it is right and necessary for an African government to seize all the country's newspapers, or imprison its opposition political leaders, is no more tolerable than for another to "explain" the necessity of the Japanese-American relocation...
...I know...
...Failing trial, he declared, the men should at once be released...
...I believe that Wallerstein has effectively answered the misunderstandings about the need for national unity in the face of centrifugal forces...
...Originally proclaimed in 1956, this policy has since firmly fastened a thorough-going dictatorial regime upon the country: The first and only legal Parliament in Indonesia's independent historyelected in 1955-was abolished by Sukarno's personal decree...
...Included among them are former Prime Ministers and Deputy Prime Ministers as well as a great many others of cabinet rank...
...For many years editor of Indonesia Raya (now, of course, defunct) perhaps the country's best newspaper, Lubis is intelligent, knowledgeable, critical and forthright...
...It must have some hope of winning...
...Most of those arrested were top leaders of either the Masjumi (the Moslem party, which was the largest in the country) or the Socialist party of Indonesia...
...Kenyatta, has written in defining democratic African socialism, "political freedom and equality are not enough...
...They insist they must have it as an instrument of social discipline because of their "desperate circumstances...
...I have often wondered why the United States, of all places, should have so much to say about the two-party system...
...We do think this is more democratic than laissez-faire capitalism, not less so...
...To respond to Mr...
...I have sat on the Opposition in the Legislature of Colonial Kenya...
...every system of power tends to become the oligarchs' playground...
...Anyhow, it is not unusual for politicians, faced by what they view as "desperate circumstances," to lose patience with everything that seems to distract public concentration from the main job...
...No answer has been received...
...Mboya's letter breathes a sense of crisis, of urgency, with which one must and does readily sympathize: the "desperate circumstances" of African countries, poverty and illiteracy and recalcitrant tribalismsthe situation one of a "continuing state of emergency" which compels a serious politician to employ forceful means toward eliminating the wasteful, the factious, toward public unity in the progressive cause...
...We aim to build a country where men and women are motivated by a sense of service and not driven by a greedy desire for gain...
...The sole hope of political liberty lies in a rich structural pluralism, the formalization of "countervailing" oligarchies which keep each other in order, in the cracks between which the individual has some chance to draw a free breath...
...Naturally, he was opposed to "Guided Democracy" and said so in no uncertain terms...
...the entire free press was destroyed...
...K. C. Wheare, an advocate of the Westminster model of government...
...the Masjumi and Socialist parties (and other parties as well) were dissolved by his order...
...It is important that bodies such as the press and the unions face up to the challenge of Africa's situation...
...But what Nyerere neglects is that every form of power tends to become oligarchical...
...It is a denial of justice, Sir Leslie added, for persons to be kept permanently in detention...
...Therefore, please discontinue my subscription...
...Furthermore, there are better safeguards for democracy than a frustrated opposition...
...Since that time, the Commission has twice written to Sukarno personally asking for information on the detained men...
...He had been persuaded that a dire "state of emergency" required the move...
...For where else is politics so much a game of ins and outs...
...Anak Agung Ode Agung (af Bali), an independent and former Minister of Foreign Affairs...
...He fought against Communism, corruption, coercion of all kinds...
...Much more valid and much more constructive criticism of the Government comes from its own back benches, from within the ranks of its own party...
...John Harrigan...
...All I will say is that the government of Kenya, and most of the other governments of Africa, believe in socialism...
...Mboya's of his own field of work, even though we may think he has a superficial notion both of it and of the pragmatic value of institutionalized dissent...
...What institutional trappings have subsequently been created in the meaningless facade of government have consisted entirely of Sukarno's personal appointees...
...Unless I am very much mistaken, it is implicit in the question that you are referring to the Western or even perhaps the United States' form of democracy, with a two- or multiparty system, division of powers and so forth...
...Doubtless Nyerere and Mboya do not feel in a position to contemplate the long-run consequences for their peoples of the monolithic one-party system...
...Whether you call it "democratic" or something else, the all-dominant ideological oneparty state soon becomes the most oligarchical system of all, with disastrous long-run consequences for the commonweal...
...No charges have ever been publicly made against them, and they have never been brought to trial...
...Americans should not be unappreciative of the problem we face in this respect...
...But in some countries where opposition parties are based on, say, some religious or linguistic or national difference, they have in fact a fixed following, but little chance of increasing it...
...and the freedom of the trade unions, especially on the non-Communist side, has been severely limited and all but destroyed...
...What is of special concern to the friends of Indonesian democracy and personal friends of the prisoners is the state of the latter's health...
...Fearing for his life, his friends put up a spirited protest which brought about his transfer to a military hospital...
...Mboya's...
...Washington, D.C Harry Goldberg PORNOGRAPHY Having read Stanley Edgar Hyman's "In Defense of Pornography" (NL, September 2), I was compelled to admit that his articles outweigh even all the pleasure and enjoyment I had from the other parts of your excellent publication...
...Let it be explained by Dr...
...Soon thereafter he was invited to attend the General Assembly of the International Press Institute held in Israel...
...SUKARNO'S PRISONERS While the world's attention is fixed on Indonesia's bitter opposition to the Malaysian Federation, President Sukarno's cruel and callous treatment of political prisoners has been largely ignored...
...Detroit, Mich...
...I am not unaware that varying attitudes to these matters are current in different parts of Africa...
...In their opposition to the argument from economic need, the Ritners appear to be engaging in the classical debate of state versus private enterprise, rather than in the immediate question before us...
...The Ritners disown Bagehot and Dicey at this point but in their attitudes, as in so much writing about Africa from the West, they are continuing the tradition...
...Most of these men have been rotting in jail in East Java...
...But his outline of the elementary principles of legal justice was apparently wasted upon the Indonesian President...
...Mohamed Roem (Masjumi), former Deputy Prime Minister...
...Sjahrir, for instance, who suffers from high blood pressure, recently suffered a stroke which left him in a seriously weakened condition...
...It is quite another thing to erect an elaborate system of pseudescientific apologetics for every action taken by various politicians claiming "desperate circumstances...
...We do believe in considerable state control of and participation in the economic processes...
...The Opposition to nationalist governments comes generally from tribal groupings who have no prospect of achieving power...
...I am not threatening that we intend to outlaw formal Opposition, but we have never made any secret of the fact that we believe Kenya would best be served by one nationalist party...
...In an affluent society the press can, perhaps, afford to concentrate on the trivial and the transient...
...In such countries, there is really no responsible Opposition it can easily become irresponsible, factious, desperate...
...Nasution maintained that the prisoners were not in jail but under "house arrest" while they were being "investigated...
...But among those imprisoned are some of the most famous names in recent Indonesian history, men whose personal histories are inseparable from the early heroic days of the country's struggle for independence from Dutch colonial control...
...In the United States itself what in effect are amendments to the Constitution made by the Supreme Court, as Judges move with the times...
...I will not try to match the shrill tone of the Ritners' concluding paragraphs...
...A small point of criticism of The New Leader itself is called for by its cover query, "Can Democracy Work in Africa...
...At the Assembly he made an impassioned attack on Sukarno and his dictatorship in Indonesia...
...Rather than asking, "What is good in this piece of proposed legislation and what is bad," the leaders of organized opposition merely ask, "How can we use this Bill to harry and attack the Government...
...In each constituency, for any given election, they are banners which happen to be used by one team of candidates or another...
...Chicago, III V. Chalupa As a token of my support for Hyman's courageous views on censorship, here is my check for a three-year renewal...
...Some people have talked of taking to arms or of attempting secession if they do not get their own way...
...A statement by Sir Leslie put out at the time said that the Commission had reason to believe that most of the prisoners were being held in a former Japanese concentration camp...
...Mboya, but with American academics who undertake to justify and "explain" such ideas as Mr...
...C. Wheare, Legislatures, Oxford University Press, 1963...
...Sukarno was intent on "salting away" any potential opposition to his unbridled dictatorial rule...
...The International Commission of Jurists has repeatedly raised the question with the Indonesian government, but to no avail...
...Sukarno's purpose in imprisoning them is therefore transparently clear: to let them rot in jail until they die, while hoping that the world will forget about them...
...A rich country can allow unions and employers to battle over their respective shares of a large cake...
...Perhaps I might be allowed, in closing, to ask Americans to turn inward for a moment and to ponder the question of President Nyerere of Tanganyika in his celebrated paper on the One-Party State...
...Ad hoc theoretical justifications are not the academic's business...
...We respect the rights of the press, of the trade unions, of employers' organizations and of other pressure groups...
...The fact that most of these men had not participated in the abortive 1958 rebellion did not save them...
...It is just this that the world must not allow to happen...
...Mboya's general discussion point, the quote from President Nyerere on the two-party system...
...Sir Leslie informed Sukarno that it would be in accordance with the rule of law as it is normally practiced in freedom loving countries that charges be promptly and publicly made against the arrested men if there were a prima facie case against them, and that they then be brought to a speedy and public trial in accordance with judicial processes...
...Among those arrested were Sutan Sjahrir, head of the Socialist party and the Prime Minister, from 1945-47, of the first three Indonesian Cabinets...
...If the situation in Indonesia were to change, these prisoners are among the men who could lead a resurgent democracy...
...In December 1956, he was placed under house arrest and remained there until 1961...
...That's what they say, and we must accept it as such...
...In our desperate circumstances such irresponsible action can do great damage...
...This, I maintain, is the situation in much of Africa...
...Would the United States be so occupied with checks and balances, with state rights and Federal rights, if half its people were undernourished, if a majority were illiterate, if most were doomed to die before middle age...
...Yet this role of "house theoretician" for anti-libertarian governments has been voluntarily adopted by most American Africanists...
...How many of these prisoners are now languishing in Indonesian jails is not known...
...As far back as March 14, 1962, Sir Leslie Munro, Secretary General of the International Commission of Jurists, protested in Jakarta to Indonesia's General Nasution, then Minister of Defense...
...A system of responsible opposition can only exist and be effective if in fact the Opposition has a chance...
...Protests poured in during those years from all over the world--from various journalistic associations (including our own American Newspaper Guild)-but all to no end...
...Nairobi, Kenya Tom Mboya The Ritners reply: Our quarrel has never been with Mr...
...These are the two political parties which were the firmest and most consistent critics of Sukarno's policy of "Guided Democracy...
...DEAR EDITOR AFRICAN DEMOCRACY From the start, I had better state the obvious-that my views lie closer to those of Immanuel Wallerstein ("An Africanist's Reply" NL, June 10) than to those of Susan and Peter Ritner ("Africanism's Constitutional Malarkey") in the same issue...
...How," he asked, "can you have democracy with a two-party system...
...Sukiman Wirjosandjojo (Masjumi), Prime Minister in 1951...
...One other prisoner must be noted: he is Mochtar Lubis, Indonesia's outstanding journalist and a man of international reputation...
...Among these were Sjafruddin, Natsir and Harahap, all of them Masjumi and the latter two former Prime Ministers of Indonesia...
...The underdeveloped countries of Africa are in a continuing state of emergency...
...In an evil hour in 1942 one of the greatest libertarians of all time, Franklin D. Roosevelt, consented to the feckless, cruel, and unconstitutional evacuation of Americans of Japanese ancestry from California...
...We do genuinely believe that opposition for opposition's sake quickly arises under the two-party system...
...In a wide crackdown on January 16, 1962, Sukarno arrested many of the other top leaders of the by now defunct Masjumi and Socialist parties...
...There have been rumblings of desperation in Opposition groups in my country...
...When political adjustments do come in Africa, it is more likely to be by some alteration of power within the nationalist movement...
...There is another point...
...It happens even in "affluent" republics...
...Even foreign affairs divisions in Congress do not produce a straight party line-up for and against the Administration's policies...
...Upon his return to Indonesia, he was immediately re-arrested and placed in jail-this time in East Java with the rest of the "criminals"-where to this day he remains...
...But it is one thing to realize that the course of political affairs does not always run smooth, or to acknowledge that quotidian second-guessings, à la Walter Lippmann, not always are very helpful...
...But it is incredible and insufferable that American scholars should say the same thing, when we can look around us at the wreckage which one-party ideologies have made of the 20th century world...
...The party labels mean different things to different men...
...But even here it must be pointed out that such institutions must not be out of step with the needs of the country...
...As the Kenya Prime Minister, Mr...
...Often such a conviction is pretty well founded...
...to take a phase or an incident out of context and blow it up into a headline story...
...Inevitably the two-party system strikes men like Nyerere as the shadow play of twin oligarchies, in which the true public interest more or less goes begging...
...Treatment has been bad, very few visits and letters are allowed...
...Nevertheless, they have made a. number of important points which need serious consideration...
...That in many cases it is none too good goes without saying...
...The Kenya government believes in the rule of law, in the independence of the judiciary...
...Anyone who knows Kenya will realize that there is enough constructive cut and thrust within Kenya African National Union party to dispel any fears of dictatorship...
...When it comes to voting on the fundamental domestic issue of United States politics-civil rights-the Democratic and Republican labels count for little...
...In April 1961, in a false gesture of personal amnesty, he was released...
...Some of Sukarno's prisoners were arrested after the collapse of the 1958 rebellion against his regime which started in Sumatra and extended to the Celebes and other islands...
...What use would it be to dispute this perception of Mr...
...Nor is it surprising that Sukarno has appeased and protected Indonesia's Communist movement both on its political and trade union levels...
...As we have already said about everything we have to say on this subject, the present note can be a brief one...
...In our continent they would be much better occupied in making a diminutive bun a little bigger for the good of all...
...and Prawoto Mangkusamoto, a former Defense Minister...
Vol. 46 • September 1963 • No. 20
