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.