RI-Netherlands relations

RI-Netherlands relations

In 1956, when writing in Jakarta as a Dutch journalist for HRC-Handelsblad, then Prime Minister Ali Sastroamidjojo spoke prophetic words to me: "Normal relations with Holland will only become possible after the colonial diehards pass away." Commenting on your editorial on soul searching in Holland, while on a visit here as a Dutch journalist forty years later, I'd like to make a few additional comments.

Minister Jan Pronk is not a colonial diehard, but a socialist idealist and dreamer who caused, over the past quarter century, incalculable damage to the normalization of relations between our countries. The leftist information from books in libraries, and the dire new realities on the ground in Asia, constantly collide in his brain, so that at the end of the day uncontrolled wild utterances by Mr. Pronk have the same disastrous effect as those from colonial diehards.

After his latest bombshell on Dutch war-crimes some of us felt he was making an attempt to repair earlier blunders in Jakarta to gain favor with Indonesia. Prime Minister Wim Kok, in any case, immediately publicly reprimanded Pronk and told him to shut up, an aspect missing in your editorial. Pronk never understood decolonization processes, because too much Marxist ideology affected his thinking. Hence, mainly because of Pronk, relations with another former colony, the Republic of Surinam, are now in total shambles.

The Dutch have been the worst losers in European colonial history. Nehru went to London, Lumumba to Brussels, Ben Bella to Paris, but The Hague never allowed Sukarno to set foot on Dutch soil, which, as he told me so often, was his wish in order to help restore normal relations. Now Queen Beatrix will arrive Aug. 21, 1995 in Jakarta. Why not Aug. 17? As Ali Sastroamidjojo said forty years ago, too many diehards are still alive.

Recently, former cabinet Minister Sicco Mansholt warned, that we force Queen Beatrix to look silly, not to be prepared to demonstrate on Aug. 17, that half a century later the former colonial power is at last prepared to act as good losers and accept defeat. Therefore, yes, a lot of soul-searching goes on in Holland, but too many Dutch minds are not yet prepared to forget the past, or are capable to do so. Wounds linger on.

I feel that Queen Beatrix should, after Jakarta, go to Blitar and lay flowers at the grave of the father of the nation. But, perhaps, we will have to wait till 2045 for all diehards to have gone to heaven, so that King Willem (Alexander) IV will be allowed to go to East Java and formally normalize relations between Indonesia and Holland.

WILLEM L. OLTMANS

Jakarta