New book says Sukarno behind Sept. 30 movement

New book says Sukarno behind Sept. 30 movement

Harry Bhaskara, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, hbkc@centrin.net.id

A lot has been said openly about the 1965 "Sept. 30 Movement"
-- the attempted putcsh and assassination of seven top military
leaders which led to then president Sukarno's demise -- in the
last four years, due to the reform movement and the downfall of
former dictator Soeharto.

Unlike before, foreign scholars' perspectives such as those of
Donald Hindley, Bernhard Dahm, Ruth T. McVey and those in the
Cornell paper, are now readily available.

Public discussion has also been enriched by numerous locally
produced books on the topic.

The above scholars generally believe that former president
Sukarno was left uninformed about what would happen on the night
of Sept. 30 and in the early morning hours of Oct. 1, 1965 as
opposed to other scholars like Arnold C. Brackman and Justus M.
Van der Kroef who believe that he had a hand in the
assassinations.

A newly published book by local publisher Aksara Karunia
entitled In the Spirit of the Red Banteng by Dutch political
analyst Antonie C.A. Dake fell into the second camp of scholars.

Sukarno was the driving force behind the movement and was the
deciding factor behind the Communist Party of Indonesia's (PKI)
leadership spasm to link their fate to the movement, Dake told
The Jakarta Post in an interview during his brief visit here
recently.

"That was the conclusion in 1973 and it still is the
conclusion in 2002," he said.

Dake was referring to the year when the book was first
published in 1973. The book was immediately banned in Indonesia
but part of it appeared in a series in the Pedoman daily in 1974.

"As a foreigner I found it interesting that this kind of thing
could happen," he said with a chuckle.

In the time elapsed between 1973 and now, there had been no
new findings that could prove the thesis wrong, he said.

Apart from the role Sukarno played in the incident, the book
attempts to answer other questions including, the reasons for the
attempted putsch and reasons for the ensuing communal enmity,
especially in Central and East Java, and how that could evolve
into such dizzying intensity that hundreds of thousands of people
were killed.

One may ask why such a thesis, which portrays Sukarno in a
negative light, did not seem to gain much adherence in the
country despite the interest of Soeharto's government to reduce
his predecessor's legendary stature?

Dr. Richard Lowenthal of the Free University of West Berlin
said in the preface of the book that it was a conscious
repression by Soeharto's New Order government.

They had no interest in revealing that Sukarno had become the
deadly enemy of the army leadership, because this would have
undermined their own legitimacy as his successors, he claimed
referring to Soeharto's government.

"They were satisfied to know the truth but on balance saw no
reason to publish it," he wrote.

Dake dismissed as "myths" other stories or hypotheses about
the attempted putsch including those put forth by the council of
generals, a theory that Sukarno was tricked by the army or top
level politicians with substantial involvement from the American
CIA.

The bone of contention that preceded the attempted coup was a
conflict between Sukarno and his anti-communist generals over the
former's plan to arm the citizens, he said.

There was a heated debate on July 28, 1965 in a meeting
between the generals and Sukarno in Senayan, Dake said, and
Sukarno had given the nod to his Palace Guard Col. Untung who
later organized the coup, to take action against his disloyal
generals.

It is not very likely that Sukarno gave an order to kill the
generals, but he was certainly in a position to "call it on or
off", Dake said.

"If you don't stop a unit of a crack army troops to kidnap a
general, then you know that the unit did not go for a picnic," he
added.

"Of course he did not say, 'kill them', but he had allowed the
climate and the organization to go forward and it had some
results. I think he was responsible for that," he said, adding
that it was an "unspecified action" order.

PKI leaders Aidit and Njoto learned about this conversation on
Aug. 4, 1965 and they appeared to have not been able to resist
the temptation to take part in the action, thus violating
Vladimir I. Lenin's maxim: One must not play at insurrection;
once one has begun it, one must go through with it to the end.

Why had the experienced communist leaders chosen such a
disastrous and amateurish course?

In their eyes, a simple purge had to be arranged and carried
out with the aim of getting rid of a couple of anti-communist
generals, Dake wrote in the book.

And support for this could be counted on from president
Sukarno. The involvement of the PKI would remain limited in the
first phase, and only if the first phase had been completed would
the cadres and members of the party be informed.

Asked about the role of then Maj. Gen. Soeharto, Dake said he
was in a lucky position but he did not like that position in the
beginning.

He was an experienced officer but not in politics, Dake said.

Only when Gen. Abdul Haris Nasution appeared reluctant to take
things in his own hands did Soeharto come forward.

And he surprised the world when he turned out to be an able
and cunning politician as well, Dake said.

The fact that he later became a dictator and a corrupt one at
that, was a different story just like Sukarno who was good when
he first emerged as the leader of the country, he said.

Asked about the prolonged crisis the country is now in, Dake
who received his doctoral degree in political science at the Free
University of Berlin for his study of the Indonesian Communist
Party, said that he remained optimistic about Indonesia's future.