Indonesia

on the World today

ATLANTIC

February 1955

THE last year and a half has been Indonesia’s most depressing period since merdeka — independence. Many Indonesians are worried. The degree of their anxiety or discouragement depends on whether they see the political and economic deterioration as a steady, continuing trend or as the dark hours before the dawn.

Confusion abroad about this complicated country is probably increased by the tendencies of many of its foreign friends and visitors to take polarized positions. Some overconcent rale on such alarming developments as Communist gains and galloping corruption in government. Others are so charmed by and sympathetic with one of Southeast Asia’s most delightful peoples that they gloss over all the country’s more distressing symptoms.

Some of the difficulties of Southeast Asia’s southernmost, biggest, and richest country stem just from geography. Its 80 million people are spread, not over one homogeneous land mass like Burma, but across several thousand big and little islands, loosely linked by dismally inadequate transportation. With four times the population Vietnam, Indonesia has far fewer experienced officials and technicians. (An engineer just out of school manages the state-owned railways — a post an American would hold in his own country after some twenty-live years of practical experience.)

Colonial legacies

Only half a decade sovereign after more than three centuries of Dutch rule, Indonesia has inherited from the colonial period one of the highest illiteracy rates of the whole Southeast Asian area, cumbersome Dutch administrative methods and machinery, a great bundle of anti-white neuroses, and an appalling ignorance of the rest of the world. One hangover from the merdeka intoxication is a seven-hour day, which amounts to about four hours actual work. Legacies from the four-year war against the Dutch are three or four leftover rebellions against central authority and an army at least twice too big for the country’s finances. Even Indonesia’s natural wealth is a problem, since plantations, oil fields, and import-export trade remain largely in Dutch hands. Of course the omnipresent, fabulously industrious overseas Chinese control the retail business.

Indonesian progress would be painfully gradual even if directed by its most brilliant leaders. Instead, for more than a year the country’s affairs have been in the hands of less than first-rate ministers, headed by the former ambassador to the United States, Ali Sastroamidjojo. The central position in the coalition cabinet has been held by the Indonesian National Party, or PNI, the nation’s second largest party, ultranationalists shading from right to a non-Communisl left which is, to say the least, muddleheaded about Communism. Coöperating are a score of liny groups and splinter parties representing minute constituencies and ranging from extreme right-wing orthodox Moslem to a Communist-front peasant outfit. One of these “parties” with a cabinet minister has had one member of parliament.

This heterogeneous alliance has been held together by desire for position and power, by the increasingly open support of President Sukarno, who is supposed to be above and outside partisan politics, and by a jingo nationalism which involves great expenditure of time, oratory, and energy on issues such as Indonesia’s claims to Dutch New Guinea. Opposition parlies are the Masjumi, Indonesia’s biggest party, which stands for a Moslem state; the Socialist Party, with small membership but many first-class men; and the Christian parties.

The respectable Communists

Indonesia is the only Southeast Asian country (outside Vietnam) where the Communist Party openly supports the government. The government coalition has insisted it is simply using the Communists. Certainly the Communists have been using their special relationship to the government.

“The Communists have been under a cloud since their revolt against the republican government during the revolution,”says a Socialist. “What the Ali government has done is to make them once more respectable.” Under previous cabinets the Communist Part}' (PKI), though legal, was closely watched and had to step rather circumspectly. Now it has more scope. Aidit, the party’s 31-yearold secretary general, puts it this way: “We see a government guaranteeing democratic freedoms 1,o an extent never before reached. . . . The prevalence of democratie freedoms enables the fast development of the democratic mass organizations.”

Just how fast is illustrated by a few figures. In 1951 the PKI claimed about 12,000 members; today Aidit says there are 500,000 members and candidates. Perbebpsi, the Communist-controlled paramilitary organizal ion of ex-guerrillas, has grown in the last year or so from 50,000 to 200,000. Although the Socialists have begun to challenge their control of Indonesian labor, the PKI has been working hard on youth, the army, and the peasants. There are far more hammer and sickle signs and posters in Jakarta and the villages along the roads than a year and a half ago.

The party seems flush with money which Indonesians believe comes from abroad. During 1954 the PKI built a fine new headquarters near the Peiping Consulate, for which they paid, they say, by the sale of postcards. Indonesian delegations are always taking off for some East European conference or other. Last spring a well-known Dutch Communist, generally believed to have the job of instructing the PKI on election tactics, go1 not only a visa for Indonesia hut several months’ extension of his visa.

The PKI attacks the government in the villages. Hut in the capital they are wooing President Sukarno; they have even voiced allegiance to the Pantja Sila, the five principles on which the republic is based, one of them being Belief in God.

It was during the Ali premiership that Peiping filled the Jakarta ambassadorial post left vacant for almost two years. Moscow also set up diplomatic representation, from which the United States Information Agency might take a few tips; all the Russians speak fluent Indonesian and when they give a big reception they send packets of food to the wailing chauffeurs. Aidit says it is in the field of foreign relations that the Ali cabinet has made most progress; in fact PNl “neutralism" does seem slanted in Chinn’s and Russia’s favor.

Sukarno and the ministers he has backed believe they can ride the Communist tiger. It’s true that even the opposhion parties do not see Communism as a serious threat to Indonesia — at present. The PKI has infiltrated some, but not many, men into both army and government. The police is antiPKL

Some Indonesians think the government’s policy towards the Communists has been a good thing, because it has unified the Masjumi, clarified and solidified the anti-Communisl views of the Masjumi and Socialists, and galvanized them both into really getting out and working among young people, workers, and peasants.

Corruption in the government

Indonesians have openly called the Ali cabinet the Sukarno cabinet, following Sukarno strategy, weighted with Sukarno’s co-workers of the late twenties and the Japanese period. Che President’s identification of himself with the PNI and his willingness to use the PKI stem from a complex of motives, among which are his desire for power as well as position and his sincere opposition to the Masjumi’s concept of an Islamic state. But by casting his lot with one party, by supporting a government which commands very little respect, and by taking as another wife a divorcee of questionable respectability, Indonesia’s handsome, magnetic President has lost some of the nation-wide prestige and grass-roots popularity which have always meant so much to him.

One of the most serious developments of 1954 was the emergence, for the first time in Indonesia, of widespread, large-scale corruption among officials. Most of the Ali cabinet seem to have indulged in one or more varieties of financial skulduggery; in at least one key ministry, bribery has reached from the top right down to the lowest clerical level. Since imports and exports are government-controlled, one of the most lucrative rackets has been the selling of “special licenses” to importers (who, if they aro Indonesian, often resell them to Chinese); the kickback goes to the minister and party coders, and prices rise.

Officials have used their special position to set up and engage in business. There are other methods of gelling rich quick: blackmailing Cbines©, for one, and making a big private rake-off on government purchases, for another. Minor graft is exemplified by a government establishment that buys, with precious foreign exchange, several hundred cars every year; after twelve months it sells them for a nominal sum to officials who dispose of them on the black market at an astronomical profit.

Government salaries are incredibly inadequate, and the growth of some corruption was inevitable under any cabinet, but not, say Indonesians bilterly, to the degree that ministers can buy cars, weekend houses, real estate, hotels, and jewelry for their wives.

Friction among the islands

While private pockets have been filled and Dutch and Chinese enterprises have continued to make sizable profits, there has been serious deterioration in Indonesia’s budgetary and foreign exchange position. Prices are high and many near-essentials unavailable in the cities. But it takes a long time for Jakarta s policies to be felt in Indonesia’s thousands of little villages based on a fairly primitive agrarian economy.

Increased rice production has meant that the price of this essential food has remained pretty steady. No one is starving in these lush islands. Certainly the villager doesn’t like to see roads deteriorating or to pay more for sugar, farm implements, and lextile’s. But perhaps he balances against these ills the government’s remarkable attack on illiteracy among children and adults and the steady growth of coöperatives, sponsored chiefly by the Socialists and Mohammed Hatta, the Viee-President.

A dangerous by-produel of Jakarta’s wasteful financial policies is the dissatisfaction of other islands over what they regard as Java’s monopoly of spending the country s income. Sumatra, Indonesia’s biggest island, which earns over half the nation’s foreign exchange, complains bitterly that none of its hard-won profits ever comes back for Sumatran development. Its northern tip, the Atjeth district, simply disregards the capital, exporting and importing directly with Malaya,

A dramatic example of how economic ties with Jakarta may be loosening was given last fall by the Celebes, Indonesia’s third largest island and the rice producer for east Indonesian territory. In September the Indonesian navy stopped several Burmese ships carrying thousands of tons of copra from Macassar destined for direct export abroad, by-passing legal channels of selling to the central govenment.

The smugglers carried papers signed by Lieutenant Colonel J. F. Warouvv, army commander in the Celebes, who openly defended himself by saying that in spite of the fact that he was supposed to he fighting the island’s local rebels he had received no funds from Jakarta for his army. Selling copra, he pointed out, was his only way to get such essential items as cement, soldiers’ shoes, and uniforms. The Burmese ships proceeded quietly on their way and Colonel Warouw has since received his normal promotion. This type of economic autonomy can easily develop by degrees into serious political fragmentation. Like corruption, it will be hard to counteract once it gains momentum.

The national election scheduled for 1955 would certainly not solve these or any other Indonesian problems, but it would clear the air for tackling some of them. The present parliament, appointed during the revolution, is responsible to no constituencies and probably reflects actual party strength inaccurately. The election would give one faction, such as the Masjumi, or a coalition of parties a mandate for decisive action.

Everyone, including the Communists, advocates elections; party campaigning and the government ‘s preparations for them continue. But a good many Indonesians in the opposition doubt whether the voting will be held until and unless the government groups believe they can win, one way or another. There is always the danger that if ordinary democratic channels are blocked, Indonesians may turn to other, more costly solutions.