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Rubbing Shoulders With
Two Presidents
(Tom Graciano/IM)
 As
I mentioned in a previous installment of my story, in early
1966 Bung Karno instructed General Suharto to restore security
and order throughout the country in the aftermath of the
October 1965 abortive communist coup attempt. Five top army
generals were slain in the unsuccessful attempt to grab
power allegedly masterminded by the PKI (Indonesian Communist
Party). The short-lived putsch, which actually began just
before midnight on September 30, was quashed by crack commando
troops led by none other than Pak Harto himself the following
day, October 1.
Pak Harto dissolved the PKI, at the time the largest communist
party outside the communist bloc that claimed to have five
million card-carrying members. The party’s demise was at
the top of the three-point demand pressed by university
and high-school students. Following the putsch, they took
to the streets every day demonstrating against the government,
still legally led by Bung Karno. The general also disbanded
Bung Karno’s highly-controversial 100-member cabinet. A
number of left-leaning ministers suspected of complicity
in the coup attempt were arrested.
 Among
those arrested were Dr. Subandrio, the foreign minister,
and Air Marshal Omar Dhani, commander of the Air Force.
Both were later tried by a special military tribunal and
sentenced to death, but a few years later the sentence for
each one of them was commuted to a life imprisonment. In
1969 I was given special permission by the military to bring
a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) News crew to film
Dr. Subandrio in Cimahi jail, just outside Bandung, capital
of West Java, about 100 miles southeast of Jakarta. No interview
was allowed but I managed to talk briefly with the disgraced
ex-foreign minister. It was enough for CBC correspondent
Bill Cunningham to create a story that I was told was well
received by Canadian TV viewers.
A new cabinet was formed by Bung Karno apparently involving
a lot of lobbying and persuasion from the military and pro-military
politicians. No less than five deputy prime ministers were
appointed to supervise ministers handling portfolios related
to the respective areas of responsibility of each one of
them. General Suharto was deputy prime minister for defense
and security. Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX, the ruler of Yoryakarta,
Central Java, popularly referred to as just “the Sultan,”
was in charge of economy and finance. Adam Malik, addressed
as Pak Adam, a former journalist whom Bung Karno appointed
as ambassador in Moscow and later trade minister, handled
political affairs. Pak Adam doubled up as a foreign minister.
 There
were two other deputy prime ministers – Dr. Ruslan Abdulgani
and Dr. J. Leimena, who were seen as Bung Karno’s supporters.
But Pak Harto, Pak Adam and the Sultan were the trio responsible
for getting Indonesia out of the economic mess the country
was in and putting it back on the international map. Bung
Karno pulled Indonesia out of the United Nations in early
1965 during a speech in a mass rally. The rally was organized
to call for support from the masses for his Ganyang Nekolim
or Crush Neocolonialism policy. Bung Karno’s fiercely anti-US
message was unleashed in his speech during the rally, “America,
go to hell with your aid.” Dr. Abdulgani became Indonesia’s
ambassador to the UN after the country had been readmitted
to the world body.
The president held his weekly meetings with the entire cabinet
in the Bogor Palace where he was staying. Sometimes his
meetings were only with the five deputy prime ministers.
The meetings were always covered by a large number of newsmen,
local and foreign. Bung Karno was a great leader, acknowledged
by the world media who rated him on par with India’s Jawaharlal
Nehru, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Yugoslavia’s Marshal
Josip Broz Tito and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah. These leaders
initially forged the Afro-Asian political solidarity which
later on evolved into the Non-Bloc Movement Like Nasser,
Sukarno was also an orator. More than an orator, he was
also a great actor who could instantly adlib an interesting
scene to attract public attention.
I was covering the president’s meeting with the five deputy
prime ministers that day in June or July of 1966, just a
few weeks after the special MPRS sessions. As usual, the
media waiting area outside the meeting room was abuzz with
newsmen from all kinds of local and foreign media. At the
time I was also on a retainer as an assistant to Yashunori
Asai, the Jakarta correspondent of the  major
Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun. Asai-san was there, as
were many other Japanese newsmen. There was also Don Kirk
, the stringer for The New York Times, my neighbor in the
Press House. He had a petite wife whose name I can’t remember
now. Don was a six-footer with an athletic build but his
very slim wife was probably not taller than five feet five.
At the end of each cabinet meeting photographers and TV
cameramen were given 10 minutes to photograph and film the
remaining informal discussions. At the time, TV cameramen
were still carrying bulky 16-mm movie cameras with the soundmen
in tow behind them. I went inside the meeting room to take
some pictures of Bung Karno joking and laughing with the
deputy prime ministers. Of course I also shot several photos
of Pak Harto, the man rising fast on Indonesia’s totem pole
of power.
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