Megawati's personal struggle comes full circle

JAKARTA (JP): The personal struggle of Megawati Soekarnoputri has come full circle, with her appointment as Indonesia's vice president. It was not the coveted presidency, but it will do, at least for the moment.

From now on, she is virtually her own person.

She can no longer count on the greatness of her late father, Indonesia's founding president Sukarno, the way she did in the early years of her political career. Nor can she simply rely on the sympathy of her supporters to prop up her popularity.

With her also at the helm, rather than at the wrong end of the stick where she had been all these years, "struggle" will have to take on a new meaning for her.

There is no doubt that her stature has grown these past few years as she symbolized the people's suffering and their struggle against tyranny and repression.

With her father's name of Sukarno, Perjuangan (struggle) has became her adopted middle name. It was this name which she gave to her party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan), this year.

Now as vice president, she has the chance to prove that she is worthy of the first two syllables of her name -- Mega -- and that she does not live in the shadow of her father.

Born in Jakarta on Jan. 23, 1947, Dyah Permata Megawati Setyawati Soekarnoputri plunged into a political career late in life.

She joined the government-controlled PDI in 1987, defying a family consensus that all Sukarno's offspring should stay out of party politics. The rationale was that, as the nation's founding father, Sukarno belonged to all Indonesians and should not be monopolized by one political party.

A virtual political novice, some even dubbed her "a simple housewife", most people saw that the only thing Megawati had going for her at the time was her father's name. Few people believed then that she had the staying power, let alone the ability, to mount a serious challenge to the national leadership.

Her joining of PDI in 1987 evoked positive sentiments, not only among Sukarno's die-hard supporters, but particularly among first-time voters who were too young to recall the man who died in 1971, of official but not popular disgrace.

Megawati and her husband were duly rewarded by the PDI leadership with seats in the House of Representatives in 1987 for helping the party's election campaign.

Little is known about her life prior to her entry into politics. The few details that are available show that the mother of three also had to struggle in her personal life.

In his autobiography Sukarno said his wife Fatmawati gave birth to Megawati during the difficult period of the independence struggle when his family was constantly on the run and in hiding.

"It was thundering. My wife lay in the bedroom which had been fitted out specially as a hospital. Suddenly the lights went out, the roof caved in, the dark, swollen clouds opened and water rained in like a river," Sukarno wrote.

"The doctor and the sisters carried Fatmawati into her own sleeping room. She was soaked, as were the instruments, bedclothes, everything. In the darkness, by the light of a candle, our daughter was born. We named her Megawati. Mega means clouds."

Megawati spent her childhood at Merdeka Palace. She went to Padjadjaran University in Bandung to study agriculture, but dropped out in 1967 to be with her father after he had been ousted and sent to live in internment.

In 1970, she went to the University of Indonesia to study psychology but dropped out after only two years.

She has had her fair share of misfortune in her personal life. Her first husband, First Lt. Surindo Supjarso was killed in an airplane crash in Irian Jaya in 1970.

In 1972, she married Hassan Gamal Ahmad Hasan, an Egyptian diplomat posted in Jakarta. The marriage was annulled -- reportedly before it was consummated -- two weeks later when it became known that there was never any official declaration that her first husband had died.

That official declaration came through in 1973, but by then the Egyptian diplomat had returned to his country.

She married Taufik Kiemas, her present husband, in 1973.

The entry of Megawati and the "return of Sukarno's ghost" -- as the 1987 PDI election campaign was aptly described by the media -- surprised many, particularly the government.

In retrospect, it was a political miscalculation on the part of the Soeharto regime to allow the Sukarnoism revival. It was a mistake that led to even more mistakes as the government tried desperately to stop, at all costs, the trend of Sukarno's growing popularity, and with it Megawati's own rise to fame.

The campaign against Sukarnoism began in 1992, when the government banned PDI from using pictures of Sukarno in election campaigns. But Megawati remained the biggest drawing card at PDI's colorful election rallies.

In the election, PDI still came third and last, but it significantly raised its standing, at the expense of the dominant political group Golkar.

The writing was already on the wall for Soeharto and Golkar then, that unless something was done, Megawati and PDI would become a serious challenger in the 1997 election and the 1998 presidential poll.

In 1993, the government and military intervened in PDI's chairmanship election when it became apparent that Megawati was going to win. As a result, two PDI congresses ended violently and inconclusively. But at a third attempt that same year, the undercurrent was too strong for the government, and it finally agreed to allow Megawati's election.

The harassment against Megawati resumed in 1996 when the government and the military jointly conspired to remove her from the party's leadership. They sponsored a breakaway group to organize a congress that overthrew her.

That ironically was a major turning point in Megawati's political career. Many people outside PDI rallied behind her; her support and popularity rippled out well beyond the party's boundaries.

She became a symbol that many people, particularly the poor, identified with. Like them, she was a victim of endless government repression; like them, she was almost helpless in facing government wrath; and like them, she simply accepted one abuse after another.

Yet, with every additional blow, her stature grew. She became a figure to rally around for people clamoring for change and democracy in Indonesia.

The government's harassment was targeted mostly at her supporters and the symbols she represented, including at one time a renewed character assassination campaign against her father's reputation.

In July 1996, the government helped the breakaway PDI camp to forcibly take over the party's headquarters. The incident turned into a riot which the military quickly blamed on Megawati and her supporters.

In 1997, the government barred Megawati's PDI from taking part in the general election.

Her calm response to these systematic acts of harassment was often a source of frustration for her supporters and close aides.

She continued to exercise restraint and avoid direct confrontation with the government. She always insisted on pursuing legal channels, even as she herself knew that the courts of law were already in the government's pocket.

Megawati's fighting spirit has helped her overcome the various obstacles put in the way of her political career. Her calm response has also won her support. She increased her support from only "victims of oppression" to include the elite middle class, and lately hordes of former military officers.

The downfall of the Soeharto regime in May 1998 allowed her to consolidate her political power. She formed her own party, built around her loyal supporters who stayed with her through the difficult years. At a congress in Bali this year, she coined the new party name, PDI Perjuangan, to differentiate it from the government-backed party.

PDI Perjuangan garnered the most votes in the general election in June, but with 35 percent of the tally of the vote it was not enough to clinch her the coveted presidency.

Even with the election victory, she continued to be the target of abuse by her detractors, some questioning her commitment to Islam, and others doubting her because of her gender.

Her silence on many political issues in recent months made her prone to attacks. Her failure to take the initiative, including approaching other reform leaders, was blamed for her defeat in the presidential election by Abdurrahman Wahid.

Now as vice president, the time has come for her adopt a new style of leadership. If, in the past, her popularity had been more to do with her name and the outpouring of public sympathy for the bad treatment she received from the government, she will now have to prove herself through her own deeds.

She has ended one form of struggle, but another and perhaps more difficult one lies ahead of her. (emb)