The Women Scorned

In its first heady days of independence, Indonesia's rallying cry was Merdeka (freedom). Posters quoted the American Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address; President Soekarno compared Indonesia's freedom struggle to the American Revolution. Women proclaimed their equality and demanded emancipation: they organized women's clubs to fight the law allowing Moslem men four wives. Soekarno, the slender and handsome father of his country, seemed the embodiment of the new enlightenment and women sighed mistily when he spoke, which was often. They called him Mr. Merdeka.

In time the posters faded from the walls, Jefferson retreated to the ages, President Soekarno began to bald, and Indonesia (which never had an election or ratified its constitution) began to splinter. Last week, upon Indonesia's bright-eyed women still fighting for monogamy, fell the crudest blow of all. They learned that their idol, President Soekarno, had secretly taken a second wife.

Actually she was his third. Soekarno divorced wife No. 1 for childlessness, which Indonesian women agreed was good and sufficient cause. Then in 1942 he married a charming 18-year-old named Fatmawati, who bore him two boys and two girls. But last week the emancipated clubwomen of Indonesia learned of wife No. 3. Perwari, Indonesia's leading women's organization, sent out the word to other women's clubs: President Soekarno had secretly married a 3 2-year-old divorcee with five children last June; his wife Fatmawati had not even been consulted, as Moslem custom requires; Fatmawati had been made a sacrifice to the practice of "polygamy to satisfy passions." What was more. Soekarno could have no "justifiable reason" for all this since Fatmawati had "satisfied all matrimonial requirements."

On a stifling hot day last week, 50 excited matrons from 35 organizations jammed into a Jakarta living room to argue for four hours about what was to be done. They finally decided to write letters to the Cabinet and Parliament. As for 53-year-old President Soekarno, he merely issued a statement confirming his marriage to his new wife, Heriati Hartini Suwondo. Soekarno kept her prudently out of sight, though those who knew said she was a brown-eyed, black-haired Javanese beauty.

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