Word: merdeka
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...headed by Army Lieut. General Suharto. The triumvirate still feels that Sukarno is too powerful to be openly challenged, but it is systematically reducing the aura that once surrounded him. Last week the aging (65) dictator could not pick up a newspaper, or even glance from the windows of Merdeka Palace without being exposed to new evidence that his policies were being reversed, his pet construction projects shelved, his confidants jailed, and his own reputation openly attacked...
...dinner time at Merdeka Palace. There, at the round table, was President Sukarno, glaring nervously around him. There was his charming young Japanese-born wife, Ratna Sari Dewi, the hostess with the mostest in Indonesia. And there was quiet, almost shy Army Lieut. General Suharto, Indonesia's apparent new strongman, sitting on Dewi's right. As photographers clicked away, the dinner guests sipped their soup in icy silence. Not until Dewi coaxed a smile, and then a laugh, from Suharto did everyone relax...
...twelve-year-old girls, storming through pro-Communist ministries and homes, singing savage, and frequently bawdy, songs. "There is a little Peking dog called Subandrio, and he barks, gug, gug, gug," ran one of the tamer refrains. The demonstrators finally threatened to attack Sukarno's gleaming white Merdeka Palace in Djakarta, where Subandrio and some of the other Ministers had been trans ferred. There they would cut off the Ministers' heads and impale them on the spiked walls outside the palace...
Even for Indonesia, things were getting a bit out of hand. The generals decided that the time for tact was past. Machine-gun-toting troops crossed the lush lawn of the Merdeka to arrest Su bandrio and 14 leftist Ministers, reportedly flung them into the grimy guardhouse at Djakarta garrison headquarters. Then Suharto announced over the Djakarta radio, which he had also seized, that he had done it "in the name of President Sukarno," to prevent the Ministers "from becoming the victims of the Indonesian people, who are becoming restless and uncontrolled...
Rage in Yellow Shirts. Even at that, Sukarno's balance is precarious. Last week mobs of angry anti-Red students stormed through Djakarta, blocking entrances to Merdeka Palace with stolen trucks and forcing Sukarno to send helicopters to pick up his Cabinet ministers for the swearing-in ceremony. Nervous guards fired into one group, killing three students. That brought on a second mob scene, with 100,000 students-led by yellow-shirted members of the Indonesian Student Action Command (KAMI)-lining the five-mile funeral route. Sukarno retaliated by outlawing KAMI, declaring a curfew, and forbidding groups of five...