Sukarno seminar fallout

Sukarno seminar fallout

To our already extensive lexicon of foreign and foreign-
sounding words, one more has been added -- or, to be more
precise, revived: Nawaksara. Former president Sukarno was the
first to use the word in his state of the nation speech before
the Provisional People's Consultative Assembly in March 1967.

The Nawaksara address was the president's policy account to
the nation's supreme policy-making body, and as such it was voted
down by an assembly that, in the days following the aborted 1965
communist coup d'etat, had been purged of communist and other
leftist Old Order elements.

Today -- more than 30 years after the event -- few, if any,
younger Indonesians are familiar with the word, which, after all,
most older people have forgotten. Three decades of economic
success have brought about so much change that the country has
assumed an almost totally new look and very few vestiges of the
old regime remain.

Why, then, this sudden revival of interest in something that
to all appearances is buried and forgotten? And why now, at this
precise moment when the nation is about to hold one of its most
crucial general elections?

The credit goes to the Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports
Hayono Isman, who announced last week that a government-supported
seminar on the 1967 rejection of president Sukarno's policy
account had been approved by President Soeharto. On Monday, the
President himself defended the government's plan to hold a
seminar on Sukarno's downfall in order to provide Indonesians
with "accurate" information of what occurred 30 years ago.

With President Soeharto's approval secured, it is now as good
as certain that the seminar will be held later this month as
planned. Although Sukarno made no mention of the attempted coup
in his Nawaksara speech (doing so only in a supplement provided
later) speakers will no doubt recall how president Sukarno, in
those crucial days, defended his refusal to outlaw the Indonesian
Communist Party and called the 1965 coup attempt a mere "ripple
in the ocean of the revolution". His left-leaning policies and
his brand of "guided democracy" will come under the spotlight.

There is no doubt that such a seminar could provide vast
valuable historical information for students and historians --
provided, of course, that balanced, dispassionate discussion can
take place. Such a seminar could indeed, as Minister/State
Secretary Moerdiono put it, let Indonesians study their history
and learn from past experiences.

From the purely historical point of view, therefore, there is
only positive things to say for holding it. One problem which the
organizers must keep in mind, though, is that such a forum may
also raise a host of new questions. Many people, for example,
believe that the true objective of the planned forum is not
merely to delve into the past to obtain accurate historical
information, but to provide a response to the negative publicity
that has been aimed from various sides at the New Order
government in recent months.

One must keep in mind, though, that the present generation of
Indonesians is the product of a social environment that is
totally different from, say, that of the 1996 Generation, which
took an active part in the quelling of the 1965 putsch and in
bringing about the downfall of Sukarno. Hence, the historical
perspective of today's young Indonesians can be expected to be
different. Young Indonesians have easy access to all kinds of
information -- desirable and undesirable -- from across the
globe, and they are better trained to examine it with a critical
mind.

Aside from all that, there can be little doubt that the
planned seminar will reopen some old wounds, government
assurances to the contrary notwithstanding. Also, demands for
similar forums on other historical topics that are still
considered sensitive may arise. The Nawaksara seminar in itself
is a good idea, as long as we are prepared to accept any
resulting fallout.