Struggle is Megawati's middle name

JAKARTA (JP): Megawati Soekarnoputri has survived one body blow after another on her way to being nominated as Indonesia's next president by the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI).

The government and the military stopped at almost nothing -- bar arresting or physically harming her -- in blocking her path to contest the national leadership, which many of her ardent supporters claim to be rightfully hers.

PDI Perjuangan -- literally "PDI in struggle" to distinguish it from the government-created PDI executive board -- was unanimous in giving her the presidential ticket during the party's congress in Bali which ended on Saturday.

For a political organization that has been built more around her stature than any policies or ideology, her early nomination was a matter of course, and a clever campaign ploy ahead of the general election planned by President B.J. Habibie for next May.

But it has been a "long and winding struggle" -- to borrow the phrase from her speech to the opening ceremony in Denpasar -- for the 51-year old, much more so than for her party.

Perjuangan has always been part of her since she plunged into the political arena even though the odds were stacked heavily against her. Struggle has become the hallmark of her political career. It is like a middle name to her, not that she needs another one.

Born in Jakarta on Jan. 23, 1947, Dyah Permata Megawati Setyawati Soekarnoputri joined the 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 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 for the national leadership.

Her joining of the PDI in 1987 evoked 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 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 in the presidential 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 Lieutenant 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 "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 government 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 barred the 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 president 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 the 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 the 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 the 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. The government also ordered the tightly controlled press to refer to her as Megawati Taufik Kiemas, without the "Sukarno" tag.

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. Many of them were subsequently rounded up, tried and jailed.

Megawati was also barred from traveling to meet her supporters outside Jakarta. 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 to all of these has also won her much support. She has increased her support from only "victims of oppression" to include increasingly the elite middle class, and lately hordes of former military officers.

Yet, there is still a nagging question whether she has the capacity needed to lead the nation. This is the side of Megawati that the public has not yet been fully exposed to. Her rise in popularity has been due to her name, and to outpouring of public sympathy for the bad treatment she received from the government.

It will certainly take a lot more than these to lead a nation of more than 200 million if she wants the public to take her more seriously as a presidential candidate. The real test of leadership, and therefore the struggle, may only just be beginning for Megawati. (emb)