Indonesia: Goodbye to Bapa/c

IN death as in life, Sukarno was a problem. As Indonesia's deposed President last week succumbed at 69 after a long bout with kidney stones and high blood pressure, Djakarta's new leaders pondered the questions of how much to mourn him and how much to memorialize him. Indeed, many Indonesians were in a quandary over their bapak (father). Some felt that they should pay homage to him as the founding father who proclaimed Indonesia's independence in 1945 and spawned a sense of national identity. Others were prepared to damn him as the profligate who led his country to the brink of economic ruin and tried to hand it to the Communists in 1965.

In any case, Sukarno's heyday in the '50s and early '60s marked him as one of the most colorful figures of the century. He hobnobbed with Nehru and Nasser, lectured the West, won a mixed renown for nonalignment among developing nations and overalignment with well-developed women.

Premier Playboy. The son of a poor Javanese schoolteacher and a lovely Balinese dancer, young Sukarno was a standout from his childhood days near Surabaja; his desire to be the dominant figure in every gathering from tree climbing to stamp collecting, led to the nickname djago (rooster). Later, he earned a degree and turned to the budding independence movement. His ringing rhetoric so worried his country's Dutch rulers that they jailed him for two years and exiled him for another eight. He escaped early in World War II and collaborated with the Japanese in hopes of securing Indonesia's freedom. Finally, in August 1945, he seized on the Japanese defeat and Dutch weakness to declare independence. Thus began the long misrule of the man who once boasted of love for his country, his people, women and the arts, but added, "most of all, I love myself."

For two decades, Sukarno led his potentially rich country toward economic collapse while whimsically indulging his egotism and appetites. Women flocked around the East's premier playboy; at least six married him. He affected fancy uniforms and such titles as "Great Leader of the Revolution." Priceless objets d'art filled his sumptuous palaces. Skyscrapers and ornate monuments rose in otherwise seamy Djakarta--many of them later to stand starkly uncompleted for lack of funds.

Sukarno paid no heed to economic realities. He launched his Soviet-aided army on the wasteful konfrontasi against Malaysia, while pursuing a domestic course of high living and useless prestige. The result was $2.4 billion in foreign debts and the postwar world's worst inflation. The erstwhile "President for Life" viewed himself as a dedicated revolutionary and nationalist. But his flaming oratory and grandiose promises never produced a better life for his countrymen, nor any voice for them in his "guided democracy." Meaningless slogans and acronyms echoed in the void. Sukarno's big movement on the world stage was the 1955 Bandung Conference of Nonaligned Nations, after which he moved with aplomb in Washington, Moscow or Peking. He spouted Lincoln as easily as Lenin.

As Indonesia's national hero and one of the world's most durable politicians, Sukarno indeed seemed headed for lifelong rule. He was so revered, after all, that some countrymen drank his bottled bath water in hopes of inheriting a measure of his supposed supernatural powers. But Sukarno's suspected complicity in the 1965 Communist plot proved his political mortality. The ailing Bung (brother) was believed to favor a Communist succession after his death. Indonesia had become a virtual Peking satellite. The army quickly smashed the bungled coup attempt and touched off a bloodbath that took 400,000 lives. The powerful Partai Komunis Indonesia was practically wiped out, costing Sukarno his longtime counterbalance to the army.

Lonely Man. The generals, having crushed the coup, next removed Sukarno from power, replacing him with General Suharto. They moved slowly because of Sukarno's mass popularity; not until two years after their takeover did they abolish his titles and name Suharto president.

Lonely and pathetic, kept away from his sole remaining wife, Hartini, Sukarno spent his last two years under house arrest in the Djakarta villa he built for his fetching Japanese exwife, Ratna Sari Dewi, a 29-year-old former Tokyo nightclub hostess. Dewi, who now lives in Paris, was pregnant when she left Sukarno shortly before his ouster and has since been barred from re-entering Indonesia. However, when Sukarno called out her name on his deathbed, Dewi and her daughter were given permission to fly to Djakarta.

Sukarno wished to be buried among the rolling green hills of Java, with only these words on a plain stone marker: "Here lies Bung Karno, the mouthpiece of the Indonesian people." It is an eloquent but simple epitaph for a complex man who spent more time voicing his people's aspirations than in trying to achieve them.

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