Indomitable Dewi overcomes all obstacles

Indomitable Dewi overcomes all obstacles

Emmy Fitri, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Belying the stereotype of a delicate and demure Japanese
woman, Ratna Sari Dewi Sukarno shows her true colors.

She is tough, defiant and ambitious, a woman who declares
proudly that her achievements came through hard work and
persistence. There is a formality about her as she sits in her
Central Jakarta home, a no-nonsense, all-business attitude.

The Indonesian name her husband, Sukarno, gave her, meaning
essence of the jewel, is in many ways fitting, but ultimately she
is a great survivor, overcoming all that life has put in her
path.

Born Naoko Nemoto in Nishi-Azabu in Central Tokyo 61 years
ago, she initially wished to be an opera singer or a great
writer.

But she had a hard-scrabble existence in the difficult years
following World War II in Japan. Dewi has told of living through
poverty and even having to grab a lunch of the leftovers from the
American base.

Blessed with pretty features, Dewi realized she could become
the architect of her future. She set about improving herself,
studying English, learning Japanese dance, the Urasenke tea
ceremony and Sogestu-style flower arranging.

Hard work and an unrelenting confidence in her own abilities
are still her secrets of success.

"I study three times more than other people, I make efforts
three times than others, I work three times harder than others
but I only sleep one third of normally people do," she said last
week during a trip to Jakarta from her Tokyo home.

"My life is made with my own hands and mind. I never get any
helps from other people. That is why I am proud of it and have
the confidence. I did it myself, I did everything and
everything."

She worked one night a week at Kokusai Club in Akasaka, the
place where foreign VIPs went to unwind, and it was to prove her
way out of the anonymity of Tokyo's concrete jungle.

Dewi, 19, met Sukarno, then 57, at the club, and he was to
make her his wife, one of six during his lifetime.

She was the first lady of a president who was adored by his
people as the country's founding father and given respect, albeit
sometimes grudging, as a great international statesman.

It cannot have been an easy transition to become the youngest
wife of the president in Jakarta during the uneasy period of the
early 1960s, when Sukarno gradually began to cut ties with his
hated "neo-colonialists".

Many Indonesians also harbored terrible memories of the
Japanese occupation of the country during World War II, although
Dewi was famed among the people for her beauty.

Her greatest test was in store. After an abortive coup blamed
on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in 1965, Sukarno was
shunted aside and put under house arrest as Soeharto took the
reins of power.

Dewi went into exile with her three-year-old daughter, Karina,
in Paris, choosing France because of its neutrality. But she was
unable to be at Sukarno's side when he died in 1970, and she has
frequently blamed the Indonesian government for thwarting her
final attempts to meet him.

She raised Karina on her own -- a fact of which she is
immensely proud -- and became a fixture of the international jet
set, her name cropping up in society pages and gossip columns in
London and New York through much of the 1970s.

"I became single a parent since bapak (Sukarno) passed away.
My principal in raising Karina is that she is physically related
to me but spiritually she has to be independent. She must have
her own life and I don't meddle into hers. I also respect her."

She notes that among Sukarno's children, it is only her
daughter that completed her university degree and now works as a
professional.

"I gave her the best education and set her spirituality free."

Dewi keeps homes in Paris, New York and Jakarta (she resident
her for much of the 1980s and still carries an Indonesian
passport) but her primary residence is in Tokyo's exclusive
Gotanda district.

"...I am now one of the most popular people in Japan. I make
public appearances every day on television shows," she said.

"People think I am wealthy. I am well-off, not wealthy. I also
worked hard there (in Paris) to survive."

It's her utter belief in herself that must have helped her
weather two possible public relations disasters in the early
1990s.

In 1992 Dewi spent a brief period in jail in Aspen, Colorado,
for assaulting another socialite, Maria Victoria Osmena, at a
party (she has always denied she was in the wrong).

Dewi then stunned the Indonesian public with the publication
of Syuga, a book of photographs of her, many of them showing her
nude.

"The book reflects the human life journey from birth to death.
All the feelings, from sad, happy, in mourning and the glory,"
she said in defending the book which was once banned in this
country.

Her social activities also keep her busy. She has raised some
US$90,000 for the victims of the terrorist attacks in the United
States.

It is apparently not the money that matters to her, with all
the businesses and commercials she is involved in, but the love
of doing something for others and being recognized for her
contribution.

She may be a footnote in Indonesian political history, but she
obviously still loves the attention that her name and fame bring.

"Everywhere I go people are still giving me red-carpet
treatment. On the streets, they are still calling me, asking to
take pictures with me and asking for my autograph."

With her confidence and determination, Dewi is not somebody
one would like to have as an enemy (she was in Jakarta in a
copyright case over a magazine's use of photos from Madame Syuga.

She can also be counted on to say what she thinks, especially
about the final years of Sukarno, and she is obviously no friend
of Soeharto.

"I am probably not too Indonesian because now I feel more
cosmopolitan, but I have spent 21 years living here. I know the
truth about what happened in the past concerning bapak, so why
shouldn't I tell the younger generation about that," she said.

She added that it was torture for a hard worker and thinker
like Sukarno to see the turmoil in the country in the late 1960s,
while he was physically imprisoned, unable to reach the people.

"It's so sad because what was important for bapak is first the
people and the country, second the people and the country and
third the people and the country -- then probably the fourth is
me," she said.

Dewi Sukarno has been through a lot, but there is no slowing
down.

"Only God knows when I must stop," she said, laughing.