The Vacuum Called Freedom

The ceremonies at Jogjakarta went off with the fine precision of a Javanese ritual dance. The electors took their places around a U-shaped table, behind signs lettered in the republican colors of red and white; each stood for one of the 16 states that make up the new federated republic of the United States of Indonesia. They solemnly drank Dutch chocolate, munched cookies, then cast their votes for the U.S.I.'s first President. There was only one candidate: Soekarno.

How to Fight. For 4 1/2 years, Soekarno (like many other Indonesians he has no surname) had been president of the rebel Indonesian republic which had waged war against the Dutch, and which now formed the nucleus of the new federation. A Dutch-trained engineer, and an Asia-trained nationalist, he had spent 25 of his 49 years fighting for Indonesia's independence. The Japanese made him Indonesia's puppet ruler, and he collaborated with them; later he explained that he did it to teach his countrymen how to fight the white man.

His fight against the Dutch ended, Soekarno turned relatively conservative, broke with the Communists who at first had supported him. To the press, he issued photographs of himself and his handsome family, like any Western politician; recently, he urged his extremist followers to accept the agreement signed last month at The Hague, which set up the U.S.I, and assigned it a place as equal partner with the former mother country in the new Netherlands-Indonesian Union (TIME, Nov. 14). After a lot of fiery oratory which denounced The Hague deal for making too many concessions to the Dutch, the Republican Parliament duly ratified it.

No Roses. Last week, in the red-and-gold pendopo (pavilion) of the Sultan of Jogjakarta, Soekarno formally took his oath of office on the Koran (which according to Moslem custom was held against the back of his head). "Brothers, brothers," he cried in his inaugural address, "I pray for strength. Our task now is to fill that vacuum called freedom . . . Now we must heal the wounds and wipe off the blood . . ."

If Soekarno and his inexperienced government should prove unable to fill the vacuum which the end of the white man's rule had left behind in Indonesia, the Communists stood ready to rush in. In U.N.'s Security Council, they provided a clue to their attitude toward Indonesia. The Council wanted to dispatch felicitations to the Indonesians, the Dutch, and the U.N. Commission for Indonesia, whose conciliatory work had been at least in part responsible for the birth of the new nation. But the Russians cast their 42nd and 43rd veto in the Council to block the congratulatory messages. During the debate on the matter, the Ukrainian delegate boasted that Communist guerrillas in Indonesia had launched a new offensive against Soekarno's republic. For Indonesians, as Soekarno himself had put it: "Things are not yet all moonlight and roses."

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