Word: sukarno
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Wavering General. While the slaughters went on around the country, Sukarno and the military were gingerly beginning their delicate dance for power in Djakarta. Quite naturally, the army looked for leadership to General Nasution, its Minister of Defense and highest ranking officer...
...promised them land. Moreover, Indonesia's Moslems, 90% of the population, were becoming increasingly resentful of the cavalier treatment they were getting at the hands of the confident Reds. Finally, the party ignored its basic tactical doctrine: that it would never try to seize power so long as Sukarno was alive...
Nasution wavered. The murder of his daughter had left him profoundly shocked. One day he would demand that Sukarno outlaw the P.K.I, or resign, the next declare his undivided loyalty to the "Great Leader of the Revolution." "General Nasution," observes one leading politician, "is the Hamlet of Indonesia. He believes he is destined to save the country. But he vacillates in a moment of crisis...
Nasution understood all too well that the army could not simply throw Sukarno out of office, for the Bung had remained a hero to millions of Indonesians. It was Sukarno, after all, who proclaimed independence in 1945, and Sukarno again who made Indonesia a name among the nonaligned nations by sponsoring the Bandung Conference in 1955. His pretty girl friends, fancy uniforms, lavish palaces and expensive monuments are a salve for a people whose colonial masters called them "ignorant, dirty natives...
...mystical. In a land that believes fervently in spirits, sorcerers and prophets, he has become a genuine folk hero, identified in Java with a 14th century Prime Minister who built a great empire, and in Bali with Vishnu, the god of rain. Many of his countrymen believe that Sukarno is blessed with kesaktian, a supernatural magic power that protects him from evil and makes him superhuman. Palace servants used to sell bottles of his bath water to peasants, who hoped that by drinking it they would inherit some of his magic...