Word: sukarno
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...nation Sukarno precariously governed was precariously split politically. There are four major and nearly equal parties: 1) the Nationalists, created by Sukarno and sustained by a horde of underpaid government bureaucrats; 2) Masjumi, a Moslem party of small traders and urban businessmen with a pronounced Western outlook; 3) the Orthodox Scholars, a village-based and deeply conservative Moslem group dominated by religious teachers; 4) the Communists...
...strong enough to rule, there was a succession of coalition Cabinets. Each Cabinet minister was responsible to his individual party and had to run back to headquarters for voting instructions and policy directives. The years went by, governments came and went, but the total result was inaction. In exasperation, Sukarno once cried: "Let's bury the parties...
...Indonesia's tumbling political confusion. The Outer Islands, and Sumatra in particular, produce nearly 100% of Indonesia's exports, while overpopulated Java has always been a deficit area. The profits earned by their products went to Djakarta and, it seemed to the colonels, never came back. Sukarno believes not in economics, but in people-and Java had most of the people...
...effect, Sukarno spent the Outer Islands' earnings on Java. In early 1955 Colonels Sumual and Warouw in the Celebes began shipping out copra and collecting their own taxes on the trade. Instead of sending the revenue to Djakarta, they used the money for local schools and roads. In Central Sumatra veteran Colonel Ahmad Husein followed their lead, took over the regional administration, soon was exporting rubber to Singapore. Tall, efficient Colonel Simbolon in North Sumatra and scholarly Colonel Barlian in South Sumatra also went into the business of army-managed barter and invested the profits in schools, roads, barracks...
Missing Gardner. All this was too much for Bung Karno. By now he had taken a fourth wife-a young, lissome divorcee named Hartini-without bothering to divorce Fatmawati, the mother of his five children. Sukarno took off for a tour of the world's capitals, shopping for new ideas. The tour became a triumphal procession and a tonic for the dispirited President of a mismanaged nation. He arrived in the U.S. quoting Abraham Lincoln, got a ticker-tape welcome in New York City, saw Hollywood (he was disappointed to miss Ava Gardner, who was off in Spain), made...