Great day for the indonesians

GREAT DAY FOR THE INDONESIANS

The Triumph of Sukarno

(From Noel Buckley, A.A.P.-Reuter Correspondent)

BATAVIA: July 6, 1949, was a great day for the Republic of Indonesia.

The United Nations Commission aircraft with the markings of the U.S. Air Force on its fuselage touched down on Jogjakarta airfield and the impressive figure of Sukarno, back from internment and exile on Banka Island and again President of a real but shrunken Republic, appeared in the doorway.

Wild cheers of "Merdeka" greeted him there and all along the thronged, bannered and garlanded route to the capital.

Nearly all of the Republic's scattered leaders who could reach the capital by that date were with Sukarno on his day of triumph. But there was one notable exception.

In an ordinary suburban house in Batavia, a plump, cheerful, little man, whose name was linked with Sukarno's in the Republic's greatest days, sat beside his radio and still wore his characteristic, boyish grin.

Jogjakarta radio was not powerful enough to be heard in Batavia, but Sutan Sjahrir had to visualise in detail the scene of the great day in the Republic's restored capital.

Chosen Premier of the Republic three months after its Declaration of Independence, in November, 1945, he was put forward to speak its cause to the Allies, suspicious of Jap-sponsored nationalism.

In this task his clear record of sincere nationalism, his knowledge of Western ways and understanding of Western thought, his ability as a negotiator, his humour, easy manners and pleasant personality, earned him the regard of the Dutch, British, Americans and Australians with whom he came into contact. In the years between, regard seems to have grown, despite crisis and conflict, even among the Dutch.

ARRESTED BY DUTCH

Just forty years old, Sjahrir received his higher education at Leyden. Two years after his return to Indonesia, in 1934, he was arrested by the Dutch as a political suspect and spent from then until the Japanese invasion, in 1942, in internment.

During the Japanese invasion he maintained underground contact with the Nationalist movement, but did not permit himself to be used by the Japanese in any capacity.

He gathered about him unobtrusively a small group of young intellectuals and to these he talked about nationalism, about socialism and economics, about the problems he had wrestled with and the ideas he had developed during the eight silent years of internment, which he had devoted chiefly to reading and thinking.

Detached from the Japanese administration, but in close touch with political feeling, Sjahrir was one of the first, if not the first, among leading nationalists to see the opportunity presented to the nationalists as the Japanese neared the point of collapse.

His influence, operating directly on Sukarno and Hatta, and through his student-group, precipitated the Declaration of Independence.

This, as he relates in his recently translated book *Out of Exile*, he had intended to be purely revolutionary and anti-Japanese in character, but events in the last stages passed out of his control.

Nevertheless, and this is also stressed in the concluding pages of his book, where he deals with the events of August, 1945, Sjahrir attached over-riding importance to preserving the unity of the nationalist movement.

REPUBLIC LAUNCHED

By that proclamation, changed though it was from the original draft, the Republic was at least launched and his hopes lay and still lie with the Republic.

Sjahrir went along with the Republic, accepted high office in it and for eighteen months wrestled with its internal and external problems until in June, 1947, eighteen days before the first Dutch police-action, when faced with strong opposition to his policy within the Republican Government, Sjahrir resigned from his post as Premier.

When the police-action began, he went abroad as a roving ambassador for the Republic, visited India and the United States.

Sjahrir is sometimes described as a moderate but this is perhaps misleading.

He is moderate in the sense that he is essentially humane and would avoid the employment of destructive force in the furtherance of his political ideals if at all possible.

But he is second to none among the Republican leaders in his determination to realise the Republican ideal of a completely sovereign, independent, Indonesian nation.

When Sjahrir ceased to be Premier, he was appointed Special Adviser to President Sukarno and, in this capacity, he was with Sukarno in Jogjakarta when Dutch paratroopers captured the city on December 18, 1948.

With Sukarno and the elderly Foreign Minister, Haji Agoes Salim, Sjahrir was later taken to Brastagi in North Sumatra.

Sjahrir was the first of the leading Republicans to be released from close internment when in mid-January he was brought to Batavia to meet informally Dutch Prime Minister Drees, who was then visiting Indonesia.

Since then his only direct participation in the affairs of the Republican Government have been a few visits to Banka Island when his views on the subject were sought by Sukarno and Hatta.

When negotiations were openly resumed between the Dutch and Republicans under the auspices of the UN Commission, Sjahrir was listed as a member of the Republican Delegation.

But he did not participate in either the formal or informal talks.

ADVANTAGES SACRIFICED

The over-riding importance which Sjahrir attaches to Republican unity has prevented him stating openly his disapproval of the course and results of the negotiations.

Great potential advantages have, he says, been sacrificed for the symbolic restoration of the Republican Government to its former capital, Jogjakarta. Furthermore, in the restoration of the Government to a small land-area he sees the danger of this being accepted by the world as a final result of the Dutch-Republican negotiations rather than as a single step towards final agreement.

Also, he fears serious difficulties may arise in securing implementation of a cease-fire order and, arising from this, the danger of a split in the TNI (Republican Regular Army), which would be a major disaster for the Republic.

Again, there is the presently undiscussed, but potentially most contentious, issue of the future status of the former Republican territories (the territories held by the Republic before December last—about half Java and three-quarters of Sumatra).

Sjahrir would have carried the Republican Government to Atjeh, the independent territory of the pro-Republican Atjehnese in North Sumatra, where the Republican leaders were free to go after their freedom had been declared unconditional on February 26 last.

From there he would have negotiated for a firm and irrevocable date for the transfer of sovereignty and the withdrawal of Dutch forces, using Jogjakarta as a bargaining point and relying for his strength on the continued guerrilla resistance of the TNI and the pressure of world opinion on the Dutch.

Sjahrir is pessimistic, but he declares with what one feels to be complete sincerity, "I hope I'm wrong."

BROAD SOCIALISM

His political creed is a broad socialism which places much emphasis on the dignity of the individual.

("Humanity is not made up of masses and classes but of millions of people.")

His hopes are on the young and his political plans look far into the future.

About him, again as in the days of the Japanese occupation, are gathered a group of intellectuals, both within and without his Socialist Party of Indonesia.

His associates edit vernacular papers, write pamphlets, form discussion groups, interest themselves in trade-unionism, which is still in an early stage of growth in Indonesia, talk to the people in the villages, hold high office under the Republic, the Dutch and in the Federal States.

Sjahrir knows that his political ideas are beyond the easy comprehension of the mass of his people and that a careful groundwork must be laid before he can expect mass political support.

But he is prepared to wait.

Cheerful and imperturbable he says, "If I learned anything while I was a political prisoner I learned to be patient."

Sjahrir is by no means at loggerheads with the Republican Government and it may well be that in the not too distant future he will be called to high office again.

Sjahrir has always been highly regarded by most of the foreigners with whom he has come in contact, and among those here now there are many shrewd observers who believe that, whether in the near or distant future, Sjahrir is certain to hold high office again and to exercise a most important influence on the affairs of his country.