Indonesia

on the World Today

THE problems of Indonesia in these closing months of 1953 are, like chapters in a well-arranged textbook on history, neatly divided into categories. There are the urgent, immediate questions — foreign policy, internal politics, falling prices of raw materials, the threat of a Communist coup, and the danger from a rebellion by extremist Moslems. Despite the knotty appearance that they present, all of these tangled affairs stand a fair chance of being straightened out within the next few years.

Above and beyond them, however, lie a completely different set of problems divorced from the pressure of immediacy. These involve the relationship between the natural resources of the country and its explosive growth of population. To these matters, few people are devoting any thought. About them fewer still are taking any action. Indonesians use their immediate troubles as an excuse for ignoring the threat of greater difficulties ahead.

It is nearly two years since a foreign minister roused an editorial storm in Jakarta by signing a mutual security agreement with the United States. He was accused of abandoning the nation’s precious neutrality. The newspaper tempest toppled the cabinet, but successive governments have quietly continued to accept American aid, first from the Mutual Security Administration, later from the Technical Cooperation Administration, and now from the Foreign Operations Administration.

Such is the singular dichotomy between the official view of Indonesians on foreign affairs and their off-the-record attitude. For public consumption the nation is neutral between East and West. Politicians of all parties pay lip service to the necessity of steering a firm course between capitalist imperialism and Communism.

No escape from geography

Actually even the most impassioned of the neutralist orators realizes, and admits in private, that the country can’t escape from geography. The 3000-mile-long archipelago lies in the Western orbit. Like it or not, the armed might of the United States and her allies is protecting Indonesians from Communism, a system of government which the great majority of them fear and hate.

An American visitor in personal contacts with Indonesians meets nothing but friendliness and cordial hospitality. At the same time in the newspapers, in political speeches, and in official interviews he finds a marked belligerence against the West. In Europe and America, article after article on Indonesia seems to have been compounded from correspondents’ resentment at this chip-on-theshoulder attitude, plus their anger at the petty irritations of Jakarta life—visa difficulties, intransigent customs officials, unapproachable cabinet ministers, lack of transportation, bad hotels, wretched food, mosquitoes, and heat, heat, heat.

As in so many cases in the countries of Southeast Asia, life outside the capital is far less frustrating and far more interesting. Except among the Dutch, few Westerners are aware what a large and beautiful country Indonesia is. Jakarta (known for three hundred years under the Dutch as Batavia) is on a seacoast plain near the northwest corner of Java. Half an hour’s drive to the southeast start the knobbly green hills that cover most of the island. Across the first scenic range of tea-bush-covered mountains lies the little city of Bandung. To its comfortable hotels heat-stricken Jakartans repair for cool weekends. Farther on, in Central Java, is Jogjakarta, center of the Javanese culture that dates back to the Indonesian empires of a thousand years ago.

More than 65 million of the 80 million Indonesians live on Java and Sumatra. The Indonesians’ five sevenths of Bornco, third largest island in the world, is a vast, undeveloped area of swamps and mountains. Celebes, Flores, the Moluccas, and the Lesser Sundas are too far from the center of the country to carry much weight.

In all these lightly settled regions there is a strong feeling of separatism and a dislike of the Javanese. The dislike is mutual. The Dutch favored these eastern outposts of the Indies, especially Amboina in the Moluccas, as a source of native troops. The Javanese, who bore the brunt of the revolution, haven’t yet forgiven the islanders for their loyalty to Holland. But all the islands are held together by ties of trade and tradition. There is little chance that Indonesia will fall apart of its own weight.

Political cleavage

The control of this tremendous country, with the sixth largest population in the world, is centralized in Jakarta. The important politicians and officials live and work in the capital, visiting outside it only on occasional tours of inspection. To a great extent the men who rule the country seem to be isolated from the people. There has never been an election. Members of parliament were selected by President Sukarno under a strange system of rewards and balances. He awarded seats to the various political parties on a basis of their contributions to the revolution and of the strength he himself presumed they would have if an election were held.

No member of parliament, therefore, has any responsibility to a bloc of the people as such, or more than a rather tenuous loyalty to his party. The number of small parties resembles that in the French Chamber of Deputies, but the task of forming and maintaining a cabinet in Indonesia is, if such a thing is possible, even more difficult than in France.

At the moment there are two main political blocs. On the one side are the Nationalist Party and the Communists. On the other are the Moslem Party, or Masjumi, and the moderate Indonesian Socialists. The smaller parties fall into orbits of the four important. ones like so many satellites. In between the two blocs the president fills a strange role.

The constitutional rights of the president in Indonesia haven’t yet been settled. In strict theory he is supposed to be above politics, like the king of England. But 52-year-old Sukarno (like many Indonesians he has only one name) isn’t the sort of man to divorce himself from politics. He is a fiery speechmaker, and every time he makes a speech he injects partisan elements into it, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other.

Brother Karno

To the ordinary Indonesian rice farmer, “Bung Karno" (Brother Karno) is the personification of the revolution. The intellectuals, however, are beginning to grumble that he is still fighting the battles of the forties, that he is homesick for the revolution. He is a consummate egotist. His clothes are exquisitely tailored, and he uses pancake make-up as though he were going to appear on television. But his influence is still strong in the thousands of villages.

After a prolonged cabinet crisis last summer the Nationalist Party (PNI) was able to form a government with the formcrambassador to Washington, Dr. Ali Sastroamidjojo, as premier. During his stay in America Dr. Ali was a popular speaker before chambers of commerce on the subject of Indonesian-American friendship and the desire of Indonesia for foreign investors to help develop the country. He would have a hard time now explaining to those audiences how he reconciles those policies with his present dependence on the support of the Indonesian Communist Party.

For the better part of a year the Nationalists and the Communists have maintained their informal alliance against the Masjumi. Most observers are agreed that if an election were held the Masjumi would win hands down. Villagers would vote as the imams, their religious leaders, direct. At the moment in this artificially created parliament the NationalistCommunist bloc can muster just enough votes to defeat the Masjumi and the Socialists.

Terrorists on the loose

The particular issue on which the Nationalists and the Communists combined to agitate against the Masjumi was the terrorists. Guerrilla groups are active in widespread sections of the islands. In parts of West Java, Central Java, Southern Celebes, and Borneo the situation is almost completely out of control. Some of the groups are nothing but bandits, but most of them claim allegiance to an organization called Darul Islam.

Darul Islam is a loosely knit federation of religious fanatics whose aim is a Moslem state in Indonesia organized after the manner of Pakistan. Its leader, Kartosuwirjo, has never acknowledged the authority of the republic. He maintains a state of war, raiding villages, burning, and looting to force the government to adopt a theocratic policy.

Many of the members of his bandit gangs are veterans of the guerrilla forces of the revolution. They find outlawry more profitable than working as farm laborers in their home villages. The Indonesian army, only one step removed from the guerrilla stage itself, does little to hinder their activities. One battalion sent to capture a Darul Islam gang turned around and joined the outlaws en masse.

Dr. Ali has announced a program of increased activity against the terrorists, and organization of a general election in May, 1955. So far he has done nothing to push either phase of the program. The terrorists appear to be as big a problem for the new cabinet as they have been for all its predecessors. And it seems unlikely that any Nationalist cabinet will press for an election that would almost inevitably result in a victory for the opposition.

The Dutch make money

Since returning to Jakarta from Washington the premier has continued his invitations to Western capital to help develop the country. Foreign capital now invested here is protected under the Round Table Agreement of 1949, the peace treaty between Holland and Indonesia. In return for the grant of sovereignty, Indonesia agreed to guarantee all property rights of foreign investors. Most of these, of course, were Dutch.

Thanks to the Round Table Agreement, the Dutch emerged from their defeat in very good shape. They no longer govern the country, but their profits since 1949 have been immense. As one Dutch businessman put it, 1951 was the best year Holland ever had in the Indies since the Dutch East India Company first appeared on the scene in 1602,

The Dutch now feel that the atmosphere is growing more and more unfriendly. They will stay in business while they can, but they have no desire to reinvest their profits in Indonesia. Many Dutchmen and Dutch businesses have made enough money to set themselves up with a new start in Ethiopia, Canada, or Latin America.

More oil

The foreign investors with the biggest stake in Indonesia are three of the great oil companies, two of them American. Standard-Vacuum (a combination of Jersey Standard and Socony-Vacuum) and Royal Dutch Shell had well-established fields in South Sumatra long before the war, as well as huge refineries side by side on the Musi River near Palembang.

Caltex (California Standard and The Texas Company) was just ready to drill in Central Sumatra when the war broke out. The Japanese obligingly drilled the wells and then, unable to get the oil out of the country, capped them. When the revolution died down in 1949, Caltex moved back in and put $70 million into developing the field. Production got under way last spring. Indonesia is now producing 20 per cent more oil than it did before the war.

All three companies are operating cautiously. Caltex and Shell still have special contracts with the government allowing them to use their foreign exchange as they see fit. Stanvac’s similar agreement ran out nearly two years ago. Like any other foreign firm, however, it is permitted to take its profits out of the country. Oil executives are confident that the government, with the example of Iran fresh before its eyes, won’t try to buck the world oil industry by nationalizing, unless, of course, the Communists should come to power.

Industrial slump

The foreign exchange situation of the country as a whole is bad because of the world slump in the prices of rubber and tin. The slump has hit the national budget hard. In 1950 and 1951 there were whopping surpluses, but last year the country was taken by surprise with a 3-billionrupiah ($300 million) deficit. Even with drastic economy cuts, the deficit for this year looks about the same.

This depression has brought forcefully home to Indonesians the dependence of their basically agricultural economy on world commodity prices. Despite their revolution, they are not masters in their own house. They find themselves caught in a vicious circle. Without foreign capital they cannot industrialize. Without industrialization they cannot stabilize their economy. And while their economy is unstable they cannot attract foreign capital.

The government has cut down on its imports by raising tariffs to as high as 200 per cent on all except the most necessary purchases abroad. This drastic move has enabled the ministry of finance to hold the line against devaluing the rupiah.

Necessary foodstuffs are still imported tariff-free. It seems shocking that an agricultural country like Indonesia should have to buy more than 5 per cent of its food abroad, including the Asian staff of life, rice. This unfortunate necessity is a direct result of the plantation system. For a century the Dutch reserved the best lands of Indonesia for export produce — coffee, tea, coconut and palm oils, and, of course, rubber. The Indonesian government does not plan to turn estates back to rice production, but all expansion into new lands will be in the direction of making the country self-sufficient in food.

What long-range planning there is about the future of Indonesia is being carried on by a commission of UN specialists under contract to the government. The leading spirits of this National Planning Bureau are three Canadians — Benjamin Higgins, a Harvard-trained economist; Nathan Keyfitz, an expert on problems of population; and Douglas Deane, a naturalized Australian who is specializing in a field known as “transmigration,” involving the surplus population of Java.

Too many people

There has been no census since 1930, and all statistics are vague. But the Planning Bureau figures that there are now more than 80 million people in the country, 5 million more than the official government estimate. The birth rate runs around 41 per thousand; the death rate, 20. These figures indicate that each year there are 1.6 million more Indonesians than there were the year before.

The problem of overcrowding is most acute in Java, where 55 million people are packed together. The average density of population is more than 1000 to the square mile. There is plenty of potentially good farming land in Sumatra and Borneo, but most of it is jungle or undrained swamps, with no roads, no villages, and no neighbors. Land-hungry as they are, the Javanese do not have the pioneering spirit. They are waiting until the government takes action to prepare new homes for them and to move them.

The Dutch recognized the overcrowding on Java as long as fifty years ago, when only 20 million people were living on the island. They started a “transmigration” program in 1906. But in nearly half a century only 350,000 people have been resettled. Last year, for instance, 18,000 men, women, and children were moved to Sumatra. This year the figure has been doubled, and next year the goal is 90,000. But all these are insignificant numbers compared with the growth in population.

Despite the progress of modern science, Indonesians today are not living as well as their fathers and their grandfathers. Most of the 80 million people are subsisting on a diet of rice and vegetables, 1200 to 1500 calories a day, the level of a concentration camp. Indonesia is a poor country, a have-not among the other Asian havenots. No matter what her leaders do to pull her through the crises of the moment, the future of her people looks dark.