Word: kusumasumantri
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...last week, and once again Colonel Lubis, now 33 and the army's deputy chief of staff, was in the thick of it, but not on Soekarno's side. The officers who lead Indonesia's quarter-million-man army were in revolt against Defense Minister Iwa Kusumasumantri, an admitted Marxist. They refused to accept a chief of staff he approved. Backed by the army brass, Colonel Lubis stood firm against both Kusumasumantri and Premier Ali Sastroamidjojo's government, which President Soekarno has repeatedly shored up with his own personal prestige...
With the army's ranks unbroken, Marxist Kusumasumantri finally had to quit his defense post, and last week he joined Soekarno on a flying pilgrimage to Mecca. Five days later, Ali Sastroamidjojo's government fell. It had held power for two years, longer than any other of Indonesia's twelve governments in the country's ten years of independence. Involved in the fall was Soekarno's own prestige, though he remains his country's most popular figure...
...Kusumasumantri taught history in Moscow during the 1920s, and his family still lives there. Once exiled from Indonesia by the Dutch for Communist agitation, he was implicated in 1946 in a Red-led plot against Soekarno's young independent government. As Defense Minister, he has been busily spotting his own men in key army posts, against strong opposition from Indonesia's top army commanders, whose control in the provinces has been all that saved the country from anarchy at times. Fortnight ago, Kusumasumantri reached far down the army's hierarchy for his new Chief of Staff. Colonel...
...Chief of Staff's troubles were not yet over: he had no office. Acting Chief of Staff Zulkifli Lubis, a Kusumasumantri man who has since split with him, refused to budge from his chair. Kusumasumantri fired him and named another Deputy Chief, only to have the replacement decline the honor. With nary a soldier to heed his command, one-handed Chief of Staff Utoyo repaired to a room in the Hotel des Indes, where he could bark orders at bell boys to heart's content...
...revolt of the anti-Communist colonels was proving a major embarrassment to the government of Premier Ali Sastroamidjojo. With national elections coming up next September, there was even talk that Marxist Defense" Minister Kusumasumantri would have...