Building Pressure

While the world's press reported a flurry of actions aimed at toppling him from power, Indonesia's President Sukarno held court last week in Merdeka Palace like a man who had hardly a worry in the world. Perched on an overstuffed settee and flanked by petite girl reporters, he discoursed for three straight hours before a group of correspondents, including TIME'S Frank McCulloch, the only American present. Posturing, mugging and frequently guffawing, he waxed alternately boastful and coy, intense and nostalgic, recalling at one point his 1956 trip "to that strange land, the United States of America." "I do not need a grand desk to sign important state papers," he announced. "I sign them right here on my knee." Humming all the while, he then signed a paper to prove it.

To a Japanese correspondent who had predicted that Sukarno would soon go into voluntary exile, Sukarno gibed: "Am I in Japan now? I am here and you are here, but soon"--"here he drew his fingers across his own neck--"you may have no throat. I am going to continue to work hard for a socialist society. There is enough here for everyone, but we must learn to share it equally." Did the President have any travel plans? "Yes," snapped Sukarno with a swish of his silver-mounted swagger stick, "I am going to the moon." That drew a wry rejoinder from Foreign Minister Adam Malik, seated near by. "It is impossible," said Malik. "I have not approved his visa." Malik, roared Sukarno, was quite "a jokester."

Corruption & Turpitude. Some joke. Malik and the other members of Indonesia's ruling triumvirate, General Suharto and the Sultan of Jogjakarta, have been trying for months to ease Sukarno out of the country. Turn by turn, they have gradually increased the pressure until last week it seemed as if Sukarno could hardly bear it any longer. All 21 parties in the House of Representatives signed a request to make General Suharto, the leader of the triumvirate, President in Sukarno's place. Even Sukarno's own Indonesian Nationalist Party urged him to step down while the stepping was safe, and one military man after another came to the palace to urge the same move on him. Students, labor unions and other organizations continued to demonstrate against him. Thousands of students paraded silently through Djakarta's streets carrying effigies of Sukarno facing a noose.

In four days of marathon sessions before Sukarno's press conference, the triumvirate had pleaded with him to leave voluntarily. Suharto and his colleagues pointed out that he might have to be brought to trial on charges that he encouraged the abortive Communist coup of 1965. The verdict might well be guilty, and the sentence death. They reminded him that they were already armed with a parliamentary resolution demanding his ouster. At one point, Sukarno broke down and wept, pleading that he be given "a chance to die in my home country." But he recovered next day, presented the triumvirate with unacceptable demands.

The triumvirate is going slow because Sukarno is, after all, the only President Indonesia has ever known, and as such retains a great deal of public sympathy, especially in populous Java and among the tough Indonesian marines. Instead of taking any precipitate action that might cause civil war, the triumvirate has tried gradually to discredit Sukarno and erode his popularity. It would like to avoid a trial, hoping that Sukarno will eventually leave under pressure. Suharto intends to see to it that the pressure continues to build. He himself supervised the preparation of a scalding 120-page document, not yet made public, that reportedly establishes Sukarno's connection with the Communist coup, charges him with corruption and moral turpitude, and accuses him of destroying the Indonesian economy.

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