President Sukarno of Indonesia is probably the most footloose head of state since Richard the Lionhearted. Last week, as is his yearly wont, he took leave from his Djakarta palace and his lesser palace at Bogor, with its surrounding park stocked with small white deer, to fly off on a three-month junket in a chartered DC-8 (estimated charter cost: $600,000) to Thailand, South America, Europe, Moscow and Washington.
At his first stop, Thailand, where the 59-year-old Indonesian’s hobbies are by now well known, the King and Queen whisked him off to languid Chiang Mai, where 300 maidens danced prettily for the visitor. When ex-Beauty Queen Rajadaporn Srivichai proffered an orchid, Sukarno gallantly reciprocated with his own silk handkerchief. “You should enter the Miss Universe beauty contest,” he told her.
There is no denying that, for the man in charge, Indonesia is a good place to get away from, these days. Prices have risen fourfold in the past seven years; the production of Indonesia’s important palm-oil and rubber estates is down at least 30% compared to pre-World War II. Sugar, which used to be a major export, is now so scarce that in places it can be found only on the black market. The government’s presses are rolling out paper money that has no backing. Bureaucracy is so rampant that 32 separate signatures and stamps are required to authorize the import of a book. A grandiose $6 billion economic and social development program has been launched in airy disregard of the fact that there is scarcely a rupiah in government coffers to pay for it.
Such humdrum realities get little attention from Sukarno, a self-confessed romantic who said last year: “I belong to that group of people who are bound in spiritual longing by the romanticism of revolution. I am inspired by it. I am fascinated by it. I am completely absorbed by it. I am crazed. I am obsessed by the romanticism of revolution.”
Thus Indonesia’s leaders can publicly shrug off the three separate rebellions that are still in progress in three distinct parts of the Indonesian archipelago and that Army Chief of Staff General Nasution himself figures will take at least another two years to clean up. With the help of a Soviet $450 million arms loan, Nasution is building up military forces in the Moluccas, frankly aimed at adding weight to Sukarno’s repeated demands for the “liberation” of what he calls West Irian—the half of New Guinea that the Dutch currently administer.
On landing in the U.S., Sukarno headed first for the Paramount lot and the high life of Hollywood. On the itinerary for this week is Washington, where President Kennedy plans personally to meet Sukarno when he lands at the National Airport, for Sukarno is both vain and touchy. “It is wise of President Kennedy to invite one of Asia’s leaders at the start of his term,” noted Sukarno grandly.
Sukarno will certainly be looking for support on his claims to West Irian. “We will gladly accept the good offices of the United States in solving the question, as long as such mediation leads to the complete transfer of West Irian to Indonesia,” explained Foreign Minister Subandrio. The Kennedy Administration has already encouraged the Indonesians (and alarmed the Dutch) by refusing to send a U.S. representative to ceremonies last month celebrating the installation of The Netherlands New Guinea’s first elected council (23 of its 28 members are natives), in an effort to show itself neutral in the controversy.
Predictably, Sukarno will ask for more aid—he always does—since foreign money is the only thing that keeps his staggering economy going. The U.S. has already, in the eleven years of Indonesia’s existence, given it $660 million in economic assistance, and Sukarno may have better luck with Kennedy than he did with President Eisenhower, who frankly did not like him. Apparently, the Kennedy Administration figures that unless Sukarno can be steadied down, the world’s sixth most populous nation may break into warring fragments, or fall into the waiting arms of the Communists.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar