Word: bung
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...weeks, President Sukarno had resisted the new regime's efforts to replace his unwieldy, 100-man Cabinet in favor of a smaller body with lots of new faces. Day after day, the discussions dragged on as the Bung struggled to retain some vestige of his former power. If General Suharto wanted the premier ship of the new Cabinet, argued Su karno, he would have to resign as the army commander, and on no account was the foreign ministry to remain in the hands of Adam Malik, the ardent advocate of an end to Sukarno's beloved confrontation with...
...been with out its compromises. Two of Sukarno's most ineffectual and most obsequious plin-plan (yes) men had been dropped from the presidium, but as a face-saving gesture to Sukarno, it still included two politicians who, while less resented, are nonetheless supporters of the Bung. These two, together with the Sultan, who is economics minister, will oversee 15 Cabinet ministries in charge of trade, economic development and welfare - all of which desperately need far more expert guidance than the com promise appointees are likely to provide...
...however, Sukarno's luck had run out. He made his biggest mistake in February. He fired Nasution as Defense Minister and brought in two proCommunists to take his place. In the confusion that followed, the army had to come up with a new leader to fight the Bung. It chose Suharto...
Realizing that the Bung valued his pride above all else, Suharto has never once criticized Sukarno in public. "The Bung is our President," he has always insisted, and throughout his long campaign to tear down everything Sukarno stood for, he always made it appear that he was acting in the President's name. Nor did he argue with Sukarno. "We have to treat Sukarno like a small boy," says one of Suharto's close colleagues. "You have to say to him, 'Mr. President, you are right in your analysis of the situation and therefore this is what...
...paths led straight to Ratna Sari Dewi, the lovely young Japanese girl who is Sukarno's sixth and favorite wife.* The Bung met Dewi in 1959, when she was a hostess in a Tokyo nightclub, brought her back to Djakarta with him, and installed her in a large and pleasant villa just outside the city. When Suharto became boss, she took it upon herself to try to serve as an intermediary between the two men, and the General found that she could often talk the Bung into accepting compromises he had rejected from everyone else...