Indonesia's New Politics

...Suharto postponed a session of Congress from the middle of May to late June and still fears it may "lead to national disaster...

...Now former Masjumi members are saying that some of the Moslem Scholars supposedly anti-Communist leaders are "stooges" of Dr...

...Instead, Hatta has suggested that Indonesia concentrate on the practical problems of improving its dilapidated economy and restoring international prestige...

...But they have temporarily closed the split to meet the threat of another large and popular Moslem party...

...Suharto, possibly trying to distract student attention from their campaign for the Constitution, has warned that Communists are "consolidating their strength" underground...

...The irony of the division is that Indonesia's Moslems, 90 per cent of the nation's 106 million population, appeared to have united in their campaign against the Communists after the coup...

...The aftermath of the coup, in which the Communists were thoroughly crushed by both the Moslems and the Armed Forces, also shattered some of the pet policies that he had developed to unite the people around common themes...

...A mob of some 500 teenagers was trying to overrun 20 soldiers guarding the entrance and break up a congress of the Action Command of Indonesian High School Students (KAPPI) in the Press House lounge...

...These are some of the difficulties confronting Indonesia...

...I witnessed a rally in Jogjakarta in which Nationalist students threw rocks at another group of students who had participated in the purge of Communists in November and December...

...Moslem Scholars, who a month or two ago seemed willing to have Sukarno eased out of office, want him to remain as a figurehead president at least until elections for a new Peoples Consultative Congress, which has the constitutional power to choose a president and vice president...

...He was so cocksure of the neat balance he had struck between the Communists, the Armed Forces and the Moslems that he scarcely believed one of these integral elements could totally defeat the other...

...The insult cuts deep, since Subandrio has become the scapegoat for all the wrongs of the central government in the years before Sukarno was forced to transfer much of his authority to General Suharto, deputy prime minister for defense...

...This party would draw most of its members from the old Masjumi, including some who later joined the Moslem Scholars for want of anywhere else to go...

...What is most alarming to the Scholars, however, is his declared willingness to lead "a new Moslem party...

...Both these generals, as well as a number of their troops, may well want Sukarno to remain as President...

...He also has urged elections for Parliament and Congress as soon as possible...

...Former Socialist followers might prefer to reorganize their own party, but they thoroughly approve of Hatta's systematic debunking of Sukarno's ideas...

...Gone, for all practical purposes, is "confrontation" against Malaysia, the "enemy" that all Indonesians had vowed to "crush...

...Suharto recently relieved the commanding generals of both the West and Central Java military districts but reinstated the West Java commander after he signed a declaration pledging his personal loyalty...

...Donald Kirk, a frequent contributor to these pages, is a freelance writer now based in Jakarta...

...Subandrio, whom they praised for his "antiimperialist" policies...

...Western diplomats and correspondents have not hesitated to express their delight with these developments...

...General Suharto also has appeared reluctant to encourage the revival of parties whose old leaders were involved in rebellion against the government, even though he may sympathize with their motives for rebelling...

...Nasution, on speaking tours in Sumatra and Central Java, has repeatedly blamed the rise of Communism in Indonesia before the coup on "deviations from the Constitution...

...CHARISMA Indonesia's New Politics By Donald Kirk Jakarta Now that President Sukarno has been stripped of most of his power, his critics are beginning to appreciate one of his finer achievements...

...They fear that another leader might be inclined to legalize both the Masjumi and the Indonesian Socialist party, which Sukarno also outlawed six years ago...

...General Suharto is believed to oppose the presence of a new political party...

...The field would then be open not only to feuding among legitimate political parties and other anti-Communist groups but also to heightened activity by Communist sympathizers...

...The major theme of Nasution's speeches is the necessity for enforcing the 1945 constitution, which gives the People's Consultative Congress ultimate authority in governing the country...

...Like many "great leaders," both real and imagined, he was also human...

...He claims they have infiltrated legal political organizations and inspired competition between anti-Communist factions...

...The question of whether to legalize Masjumi and the Socialist party has created another split, this one in the military establishment...

...The next day the Indonesian Islamic Association gave one of the victims a hero's funeral and burial in a grave beside that of Arif Rachman Hakim, the student whose death in riots outside the President's palace last winter had made him a national hero...

...HATTA'S line in general has been to assail Sukarno's old slogans, including such articles of faith as "the Great Revolution" and Nasakom-nationalism, religion and Communism, an attempt at blending the nation's diffuse, often antagonistic drives...

...The fighting among high school students clearly symbolized a much deeper, more serious split among Moslems-the "traditional" Moslem Scholars against the "modern,' more sophisticated Masjumi...

...I am the Great Leader of the Revolution," was a theme that ran through many of his speeches, and, indeed, he was...

...Since the middle of March Hatta has made a number of speeches and statements clearly indicating his interest in serious consideration as Sukarno's successor...

...The anti-Communist students shouted "Peking dogs" at the Nationalists, who said they were only defending "the honor of Bung Karno...

...Even if Congress actually exercised its power to vote Sukarno entirely out of office, Suharto would be far from satisfied...

...Subandrio, the foreign minister who was jailed on pro-Communist charges in March...

...Forcing Sukarno to resign could make him all the more heroic a figure in the eyes of his Left-wing backers, including a number of military officers who sympathize with neither Suharto nor Nasution...

...He is afraid first that Congress members may decide not to take away Sukarno's titles and thus reinforce the President's position...

...He is said to fear that two more important parties would create hopeless political wrangling at a time when Indonesia, above all else, needs political stability...

...The Moslem Scholars themselves are split between those following their chairman, Dr...

...One general who does not is Abdul Haris Nasution, dismissed by Sukarno as defense minister in February...

...Gone, perhaps, is the deeply anti-Western emotionalism, a vestige of the struggle against Dutch colonialism, that Sukarno had promoted to whip the country into a frenzy of hatredand blind support for his policies...

...and secondly, he fears that student demonstrations outside Congress might result in another national crisis similar to that of last February and March...

...If anything, Hatta has become the choice not only of modern Moslems but also of Indonesia's "liberal" Socialists-members of the old Socialist party...

...IT is a fact, as Suharto is painfully aware, that Sukarno still has tremendous support in Central Java, home of 40 million people...

...The intruders, it turned out, were members of the Indonesian Islamic Association, a nationwide high school group once affiliated with Masjumi, a major Moslem party outlawed by Sukarno six years ago for opposing his concept of Guided Democracy, KAPPI had expelled the Masjumi students for trying to dominate the congress, which, in fact, was dominated by members of the Moslem Scholars party, allied with students from the small but influential Christian and Catholic parties...

...Then there is always the danger of secessionist movements in the outer islands, particularly Sumatra, Borneo and the Celebes, whose people have long resented Javanese domination...

...Idham Chalid, who won Sukarno's favor by appeasing the Communists, and some of their younger leaders, who have had the chance to promote an antiCommunist line since the coup...

...Gone is the fanatic insistence on Marxism, a line that Sukarno propounded partly to arouse national sentiment against foreign holdings and expropriate them for the Indonesian government...

...Newspapers often refer to Subandrio as "Durno"-an evil priest in a Javanese shadow play who gave bad advice to a king...

...Nationalist students admitted they also sympathized with Dr...

...One factor hindering both Masjumi and the Socialists is that a number of their best known leaders have just been freed after several years in prison or are still awaiting their release...

...They know that Sukarno, for all his faults, at least held the country together, and it is not at all certain that they can do the same...

...One of their members was deputized to telephone Hatta and tell him that a speaking engagement had been cancelled...

...The incident might have been minor but wasn't quite...

...Once critized by student leaders for lacking the nerve to oppose Sukarno, Nasution appears to have reversed his attitude since April...

...Nasution, given the relatively minor job of deputy supreme commander of the Crush Malaysia Command in March, has said he would "welcome a new Moslem party...

...It is not entirely impossible that parts of the Indonesian Army could ally with the Leftists in defense of Sukarno...

...He has defended the right of students to stage mass demonstrations demanding a return to the Constitution, while Suharto has indicated he now regards the student protests as embarrassing...

...Their common enemy now is Mohammed Hatta, who resigned as vice president in 1957 in protest against Sukarno's increasingly dictatorial powers...

...This danger was vividly impressed on me one night when I heard the crackle of automatic gunfire five floors below my room in the Press House...

...In the past only Sukarno, among all of Indonesia's real and potential leaders, could exercise the kind of magic that was needed to surmount such problems...

...Like Hatta, Nasution has made a number of speeches in recent weeks urging Indonesians to reconsider Sukarno's ideas and indicating his desire to return to a high position in the central government...

...His clear implication is that Congress should vote to strip Sukarno of such titles as "Great Leader of the Revolution" and "President-for-Life," neither of which is provided for in the Constitution...

...Somehow Sukarno managed to weather all these crises despite the efforts of many of his enemies, including the United States, which committed the serious blunder of giving armed support to the rebels in Sumatra and the Celebes in the late 1950s...

...Two students were killed and seven wounded...

...That unity was put to the test on numerous occasions, by Islamic nationalists, by Communists, by military leaders, by foreign governments...

...While these efforts have added an air of controversy to Hatta's campaign, they have not succeeded in suppressing it...

...Hatta also has been attacked in anonymous pamphlets put out with the secret support of the Moslem Scholars...

...It is little wonder then that Sukarno, having had the last laugh so often, grew overconfident, perhaps arrogant, in his later years...

...Sukarno violated the Constitution by appointing all the members of both bodies several years ago...

...The question now is whether Indonesia's present leaders can also develop a formula for unity-or whether some new leader will emerge with Sukarno's magnetic appeal for all Indonesians...

...The soldiers, joined by Indonesian Marines, towered their sights into the crowd when it threatened to run out of control...

...They have shown somewhat less concern with the danger that now threatens Indonesia-that of hopeless fragmentation and quarreling among political, religious, regional and ethnic groups...

...The Moslem Scholars, in turn, say that former Masjumi members are "anti-Sukarno" and against the state philosophy of Pantjasila-the five principles of belief in God, democracy, humanism, social justice and nationalism...

...Right-wing military officers, who basically would prefer a military-controlled Indonesia with two or three parties at most, subscribe to this point of view too...

...For 20 years the Bung, in the name of "the Great Revolution" and a host of other slogans, was able to force, buy, exhort, cajole, browbeat and otherwise mold his people into a unified nation...

...Despite his powerful position, Suharto has found it difficult to purge the ranks of units far removed from the military establishment in Jakarta...

...Sukarno jailed most of them without trial either for supporting the "Colonel's Revolt" of eight years ago or for leading political opposition to Guided Democracy...

...He points out that Indonesia already has two major parties-the Moslem Scholars and the Nationalist party, the latter still suffering from serious division between its moderate leaders and Left-wing rebels-as well as half a dozen minor parties...

...Young Moslem Scholars have engaged in some questionable tactics to suppress Hatta's influence...

...Suharto and his allies would like the President to remain in office as a symbol of national unity until they find a solution...

...The leaders of the Left-wing faction of the Indonesian Nationalist party have fled there and inspired a series of fights between pro- and antiCommunist groups...

...The audience waited for an hour or so before Hatta's backers went to his home and brought him to the hall amid cheers and boos...

...The abortive coup d'etat of last October 1 wildly tipped the scales that had both united Indonesia and held Sukarno in power...

...The ultimate danger in Indonesia is civil war-not a one-sided "purge" such as that last fall in which as many as 300,000 Communists may have been slaughtered, but a real war that divides the country geographically and pits armies against each other...

...They would probably unite with Masjumi in an election if they did not have popular candidates of their own...

...Nor is it impossible that Moslem politicians who otherwise abhor the Communists could be hopelessly divided by internal fighting, differences of point of view over religion, struggles between Masjumi and Moslem Scholar elements...