Children of Sukarno fight for votes

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The youngest of Sukarno's children from his third wife Fatmawati, Guruh Soekarnoputra, expressed his pain over the open rift between her three sisters, especially between incumbent President Megawati Soekarnoputri and Rachmawati Soekarnoputri.

Guruh, a choreographer and composer, said he had desperately tried to persuade them to put aside their differences and told them that they should be nicer to each other, at least in public, as the children of the country's first president.

"Every time I meet them, I always say please be nice with one another. I always play the mediator because I am the only one who can talk to all three of them," he said over the weekend.

Guruh is a House of Representatives member representing Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).

Rachmawati, who is calling herself the ideological daughter of Sukarno -- while calling Megawati a biological daughter -- routinely criticizes the President for her inability to lead the country. She has also repeatedly accused Megawati of failing to keeping to their father's nationalist and marhaenisme ideology, which promotes the virtues of the "little people".

Her public statements give an impression that Rachmawati believes herself more deserving of the presidency than her older sister Megawati.

Another daughter, Sukmawati Soekarnoputri, chairs the Marhaenisme Indonesian National Party (PNI Marhaenisme) and has a relatively good relationship with Megawati, with whom she meets frequently. As with her two sisters, Sukmawati also insists she is a true nationalist who fights for the poor.

The three siblings are vying against each other in the April 5 legislative election. Trying to lure voters from Megawati's bulk of supporters, the two younger sisters claim themselves the rightful heirs to Sukarno's ideological legacy.

Guruh said none of his sisters were ready to compromise, especially Rachmawati.

"It is regrettable that they refuse to stay together, but differing opinions are a common thing in our family," he said.

It appears Megawati was the first to sow discord among the sisters. In 1986, then-president Soeharto allowed the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) to recruit Sukarno's daughters to the party, although Soeharto strongly opposed a plan to recruit eldest son Guntur Soekarnoputra. Only Megawati responded to the offer.

In 1987 she was elected to the House and six years later, she was elected as PDI chairperson. In 1996, Soeharto ousted Megawati from the party, realizing that she had become a real political threat to him. The PDI-P, which was set up by Megawati and her followers as a separate party, won the majority votes in the 1999 general election, one year after Soeharto's downfall. The same year, she became vice president in the administration of Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid.

Two years later, Megawati rose to the presidential seat after Gus Dur was impeached.

The question remains whether Sukarno is still a selling point for Rachmawati and Sukmawati.

Unlike the 1999 election, Sukarno's pictures are no longer hot promotional tools for a campaign.

"The one thing they neglected is the fact that the public consider Sukarno a great name of the past, but is no longer an image they look to now," political observer Cornelis Lay, a member of Megawati's think tank, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

Sukarno's picture does not appear even in PDI-P campaigns, he said, which proved that the people had moved beyond the remembrance of the country's founding father.

Cornelis said it was obvious that the three Sukarnos were playing "on the same field".

"But Megawati, who has been in politics since the 1980s, remains the clear front runner," he added.