The Good Old Days

The urge to turn back the clock is as strong among revolutionaries as reactionaries. Saddled wih the chaos and corruption of 14 years of freedom, many Indonesians yearn for the good old days of 1945, when life was violent but simple and all that had to be done was win independence from the Dutch.

On a rainy afternoon last week President Sukarno tried to find the way back for himself and his country. Dressed in a spotless white uniform, with a black petji set jauntily on his head, Sukarno stood under a brown awning on the columned porch of his Freedom Palace and, "in the name of the one and only God." announced the revival of the 1945 revolutionary constitution. His fiat swept out of office the 17th government to rule Indonesia in 14 years, dissolved the Constituent Assembly, emasculated some 40-odd political parties and caused the resignation of the 27-man Cabinet of his loyal ally, Premier Djuanda.

Under the monolithic 1945 constitution, which he helped devise, Sukarno can be both President and Premier, responsible only to a 500-man Consultative Council--more than half of whose members he will nominate himself. It would seem the perfect blueprint for a dictatorship anywhere except in Indonesia, whose 3.000 scattered islands, 87 million individualistic citizens, poor communications, endemic rebellions and strong regional rivalries are too chaotic to be mastered even by a tyranny.

And Sukarno himself is less a strongman than a symbol. He must rule in partnership, and only two organizations--the army and the Communist Party--have the efficiency and administrative knack to help him govern. In naming his ten-man "inner" Cabinet last week, Sukarno clearly chose the army. Not a single post went to a Communist or a fellow traveler. Able ex-Premier Djuanda was named First Minister and Finance Minister. The army got two plums: the important Ministry of Security and Defense went to Army Commander Lieut. General A. Haris Nasution and the Production Ministry to Colonel Suprajogi. The harried Communists, who still support Sukarno because any other choice might mean extinction, cheered faintly and continued their quiet but painstaking infiltration of the civil service, the armed forces and the regional administrations.

Sukarno, perhaps the best phrasemaker in Southeast Asia, dubbed his Cabinet the "Cabinet Kerdja--the Cabinet of Work." Its program, he added, is "a very simple one: to provide food and clothing for the people in the shortest possible time, to establish security, and to continue the struggle against economic and political imperialism." This last item was a flag-waving attempt to reawaken the nationalistic fervor of 1945 by intimating that an attempt would be made to wrest West Irian (Western New Guinea) away from the Dutch. If words alone could save the staggering nation of Indonesia, Sukarno would be its savior.

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