The Eleventh Son

In World War II, the Japanese invaders beheaded Sjarif Hamid Al-Kadri, Sultan of West Borneo, and ten of his sons. The Sultan's eleventh son, an officer in the Royal Dutch Indies Army, was imprisoned, but survived. At war's end the eleventh son became Sultan of West Borneo.

The new ruler, who had a blonde Dutch wife, never showed much fondness for his jungle principality. At the parties which took up most of the little time he spent there, he added swing bands and imported whisky for the traditional tomtom beaters and veiled female attendants. His subjects, Chinese, Malays and Dyaks, regarded him as a stranger, whispered that he had none of the kekuatan adjaib (magical powers) of his ancestors.

Sultan v. Sultan. When the Indonesian Republic began its rebellion against the Dutch, the Sultan helped set up a bevy of federated Indonesian states to provide native opposition to the Republic.

While the Sultan of West Borneo served Holland, another Indonesian potentate, Sultan Hamengku Buwono of Jogjakarta, threw his own hereditary power on the side of the revolutionary Republic. As the Republic's Defense Minister, the Sultan of Jogjakarta built a Republican army out of scattered guerrilla bands.

Four months ago, the merger of the Republic and the federated states into the independent United States of Indonesia finally put the two sultans in the same camp. Both of them went after the post of Defense Minister of the new nation. The Sultan of Jogjakarta, whose Republican friends dominated the central government, got the job. The Sultan of West Borneo was appointed cabinet minister without portfolio.

The ruler of West Borneo took his setback with apparent calm. He remained calm as the new central government quickly set about gobbling up its member states, wiping out the federal system he had sponsored. During the January revolt of former Dutch Captain "Turk" Westerling, the Sultan of West Borneo appeared to be completely loyal to the government, continued to attend cabinet meetings and make the rounds of official parties.

Secret Orders. But one afternoon in early April top cabinet ministers held a rump meeting without the Sultan of West Borneo, sent a secret order to President Soekarno for signature. Then they went off to attend the local opening of the movie Joan of Arc.

Next morning police yanked the Sultan of West Borneo out of his suite in the capital's swank Hotel des Indes and hurried him off to confinement in the palace of his rival, the Sultan of Jogjakarta. West Borneo's Sultan, asserted Indonesian intelligence officers, had secretly masterminded Turk Westerling's rebellion.

Last week it was announced that the Sultan, confronted by captured Westerling aides, had confessed. He admitted, said a government statement, that he had ordered Westerling to attack a cabinet meeting, seize all the ministers present and shoot the Sultan of Jogjakarta. Then he had planned to set up a new cabinet, naming himself as defense minister. The plan misfired because on the day set for the attack the cabinet had ended its session earlier than the rebels expected. Now the Sultan of West Borneo was slated for a quick trial before a special court. As he sat in prison his own state voted to give up the semi-autonomy for which he had fought.

While getting rid of the Sultan, the government also managed to finish off Indonesia's second revolt in three months. Government troops had occupied Macassar, disarmed the soldiers of rebel Captain Andi Abdul Aziz, now a prisoner (TIME, April 24). The Macassar-based local government of East Indonesia promptly agreed to discuss surrender of its powers to the central government.

It looked as though the fall of the Sultan of West Borneo would end his federal system, lead to the formation of a single government for all Indonesia.

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