Word: sukarno
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...Sukarno was looking more and more like the old Bung (brother). At a press conference, he playfully tweaked the nose of a reporter, tried on another correspondent's sunglasses, fiddled with a photographer's camera, and ordered General Abdul Haris Nasution, whom he had fired as Defense Minister last February, to help a female reporter down from a railing. "There is no new light in Indonesia," Sukarno beamed with all his old familiar wattage. "There is the same light." Strolling out of a meeting of his Crush Malaysia Command, he shrugged off the army's talk...
...bluff and bluster, Sukarno was increasingly out of date. Already overruled by Indonesia's new chiefs was the konfrontasi that Bung Karno invented. Last week Foreign Minister Adam Malik, who has the army's backing, agreed to meet in Bangkok with Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Razak. Malik's purpose: to end the foolish fight with Malaysia. Though Sukarno angrily advised Malik not to go abroad, Malik seemed set on his course. "The confrontation of the people's stomachs," he said, "is more important than any other confrontation...
...When Sukarno realized that the Congress might indeed dilute his already weakened presidential powers, he angrily summoned Suharto and the other triumvirate members, Foreign Minister Adam Malik and the Sultan of Jogjakarta, the economics chief, to a meeting at the Djakarta home of his lovely Japanese-born wife Ratna Sara Dewi...
Drawing on the wiles that have made him one of the world's most durable rulers, Sukarno threatened to dissolve the Congress, which he had reduced to a rubber stamp anyway. Suharto refused to allow that, since the triumvirate hopes to use the Congress as the vehicle by which to re-establish democratic government in Indonesia. But in line with its policy of avoiding any frontal clashes with Sukarno, whose popularity remains high among the back-country masses, the triumvirate agreed to postpone the Congress indefinitely...
...Next, Sukarno turned to Malik, who had just returned from talks with the Philippine Foreign Minister in Bangkok, where Malik had declared that he would like to end Indonesia's costly konfrontasi with Malaysia "tomorrow." "We want to make war," thundered Sukarno, "and you want to end it." "If that's the way you feel, you can fire me," replied Foreign Minister Malik coolly. Sukarno quieted down and changed the subject, for he fully realizes that, at least for the present, he can no more fire a member of the triumvirate than they can fire...