Sukarno, Nixon and Gus Dur

By Susanto Pudjomartono

JAKARTA (JP): It was mid February 1967. Five four-star generals paid a visit to president Sukarno in his official residence in Merdeka Palace, Jakarta. The generals, the chiefs of staff of the Army, Navy, Air Force and National Police plus the minister of defense were on a special mission.

They were sent by Gen. Soeharto, then the real power holder of the new regime, to persuade Sukarno to officially transfer presidential power to Soeharto.

The meeting was reportedly a deeply emotional event. Sukarno had by then practically lost all of his official power. He had been censured by the legislature, which on Feb. 9 called for a special session of the Provisional People's Consultative Assembly to remove him from the presidency.

Sukarno's refusal to blame the Indonesian Communist Party as the main actor behind the abortive Sept. 30 Movement drew strong criticism and raised speculation that he was somehow involved in the coup attempt.

Yet, although he had been stripped of power, Sukarno still commandeered millions of loyal supporters, especially from his political strongholds of Central and East Java as well as from the marines and the Air Force. If he wanted to, Sukarno could have easily mustered support from them to defend him.

Soeharto clearly understood the situation and that is the very reason why he sent the five generals to meet Sukarno.

Reportedly there were a lot of tears shed in the meeting. Being the only non-Javanese in the meeting, minister of defense Gen. M. Panggabean could not follow the whole conversation, which was conducted mostly in Javanese. But, he later revealed that after Soeharto's message was conveyed, Sukarno repeatedly said "Kowe kok mentala" (How could you do that to me?), and each time everyone shed tears.

To make the story short, Sukarno finally agreed to hand over his presidential power to Soeharto, leave Merdeka Palace and move to the Bogor Palace with his second wife Hartini. While his children -- including the current Vice President Megawati who was then 20 -- were hastily sent to join their mother, Fatmawati, Sukarno's first wife, who lived in Kebayoran Baru, Jakarta.

History later recorded that Sukarno did not call on his loyal supporters to defend him. Obviously he knew that if he had done so, blood would have spilled and Indonesia would have plunged into civil war. Being a man whose obsession was the unity of Indonesia, apparently Sukarno preferred to lose his power rather than see shattered the country he helped found.

On Feb. 20, Sukarno issued a statement stipulating that "to end the current political conflict and for the safety of the people, the nation and the country" he agreed to transfer his authority to Gen. Soeharto. On March 7 to March 11, the Assembly convened and elected Soeharto as the acting president of the Republic of Indonesia.

Years later, on Aug. 7, 1974, the patriarch of the Republican Party, Senator Barry Goldwater, together with Senator Hugh Scott and the House Minority leader John Rhodes, were ushered into the Oval Office of the White House. They were also on a mission, an "unpleasant duty to perform", as Goldwater later was quoted as saying.

It was an unpleasant duty indeed. The three Republican senators were sent by the Republican Party to inform president Nixon of the grave situation that out of 100 Senate members, possibly only four would vote against the move to impeach Nixon for his involvement in the Watergate scandal.

The word resignation was never spoken. But Nixon reportedly responded, "I don't have many alternatives, do I?" It was later known that even before the Goldwater visit, Nixon had actually decided to quit. He announced his resignation the following evening, and left the White House the following day, Aug. 9, at noon, while his vice president, Gerald Ford, was being sworn in.

The morale of the two stories is that a leader should have a sense of rationality and a sense of reality. In the case of Sukarno, when he had to choose between civil war and removal from office, he chose the latter.

By not even trying to cling to power, when he was still capable of doing so, Sukarno showed his statesmanship, and chose his destiny. After stepping down to live in "political quarantine", his health deteriorated for lack of proper care. He died a lonely man on June 20, 1970.

President Nixon was also a rational man. When he saw that there was no other way to go, he decided to quit the presidency. History later reviewed his presidential years, and he even regained some of his popularity in the 1980s.

Indonesia now has Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid as president, who has been censured twice by the legislature (DPR) and is facing possible impeachment in the upcoming special session of the People Consultative Assembly (MPR) scheduled for Aug. 1. Instead of trying to accommodate the censures, Gus Dur has vowed to fight to the end to hold onto his presidency.

He has called the DPR's move to oust him unconstitutional. He claims he still has the support of the people and the armed forces. He has threatened to unleash his millions of diehard supporters in East Java and call them to the capital city of Jakarta to take over the DPR building to stop the Assembly from convening its special session.

He also has repeatedly threatened to impose a state of civil emergency to give him extraordinary power to dissolve the Assembly and the DPR, to arrest his political foes and call for a snap election. In the event that the Assembly issues a decree to remove him from office, he has vowed he will stay in Merdeka Palace.

When asked who would execute his order, for the military has to date defiantly resisted his plan to impose a state of emergency, Gus Dur reportedly said that if needed, his millions of supporters would execute his order.

It is a great pity for us to see a leader like Gus Dur, who was elected for his democratic ticket, to resort to such undemocratic tactics. Judging from his erratic moves in the past months, all indications show that somehow he has not only lost his sense of reality, but he is trying to deny reality.

The country has suffered enough in the last four years. Another crisis caused by a -- God forbid, bloody -- showdown between Gus Dur and the DPR (and the Assembly) would certainly cripple the country.

Sukarno and Nixon displayed their statesmanship by taking reality into consideration, and at the end of the day their decision showed good and rational judgment. Could we expect this kind of thing from Gus Dur? It is unlikely that a group of respected people would try to persuade Gus Dur to give up, since a similar mission failed in the past. Everything now depends on him.

Is it possible to hope that, if somehow something has really clouded Gus Dur's mind, then for one fleeting moment in the next few days, a sense of reality will flash into his mind? Something that will move him to make the best decision when the time comes, something that starts and ends with: "For the sake of the nation, I hereby decide to step down"?

A leader is judged by history. What kind of track record he leaves, how history records him or her, depends on his or her deeds. History shows that a leader without a sense of rationality, without a sense of reality, can only create nightmares.

Most would likely want to remember Gus Dur as the nation's teacher and leader, the guru bangsa.

The writer is a journalist at The Jakarta Post.