Rubbing Shoulders With Two Presidents
Part 12
Tom Graciano / Indonesia Media
 Dessert time came. There were mangoes and bananas. Bung Karno told Mrs. Hartini, “Tin, you must do your job now as a wife.” “Please peel a mango for me and give me a couple of slices.” Bung Karno was 65 at the time and Mrs. Hartini must have been in her mid-50s. But the romantic relationship between the two of them, as I could feel it from the way they spoke to each other, was just like an affectionate interaction between two young, newly-married couple. Bung Karno was handsome, charismatic and a very eloquent speaker with a sweet bass voice, fluent in English and Dutch besides Indonesian, his mother tongue. Mrs. Hartini looked at least ten years younger than her real age. She had two sons from her marriage with Bung Karno – Taufan and Bayu.
Three of us, one male and two female journalists, took turns to pose with the president and the first lady in the living room before we took leave of them. Susilo and I took turns in taking the pictures. A few weeks later Mrs. Hartini sent her aide to the Press House to pick me up. It was her birthday and she asked me to take pictures of her with the president and their children. I brought with me the photos showing me and the two lady journalists with the first couple. And I got each one of them to autograph the photos, but I lost the one with Bung Karno’s signature.
The lunch was over in an hour and a half. We went back to the press room in the ceremonial building across the lawn from the house. Many journalists were still there as they wanted to interview us so they could write their own stories about the rare, unprecedented event. Asai-san was still there because he wanted to make sure I would give him a story and some photos. But he was sulking and acting like a child, complaining to me, in his English spoken with a heavy Japanese accent, “Tommy, it’s not fair, I’m the correspondent, I should have been the one going to the lunch with the president.”
 That first encounter between me and the president was followed by several others before the night Bung Karno made me and Grace sit on the president’s and the first lady’s chairs in the Bogor Palace. I went regularly to Bogor to cover the weekly cabinet meetings. Every time I took pictures at the end of the sessions Bung Karno would always strike a warm conversation with me. The president had the habit of talking with newsmen particularly the ones he knew were affiliated with the major media, both local and foreign. But I could see the deputy prime ministers as well as the ministers were wondering why he would talk to me more than with the others.
The day I was asked to take pictures of Mrs. Hartini on her birthday the president was to receive a courtesy call by Foreign Secretary Narciso Ramos of the Philippines, who was on an official visit to Indonesia. Ramos was accompanied by the Philippine ambassador in Jakarta, Narciso Reyes. So the photo sessions had to be done early in the morning before the Filipino visitors arrived in the Bogor Palace. The president had to rush into the meeting room when the foreign guests came, but Mrs. Hartini still wanted me to take more pictures of her and her four children. The first lady had two daughters from a previous marriage.
I was finished with the first lady just in time to see the meeting between the president and the Philippine dignitaries come to an end. They came out of the meeting room and were standing on the porch of the ceremonial building engaged in small talks while waiting for the Philippine ambassador’s limousine to arrive at the foot of the steps leading up to the porch. I joined the other photographers to take pictures of Bung Karno talking with his Philippine guests.
 Suddenly Bung Karno shouted at me, “Tommy, you’d better make sure your pictures show us looking good, huh.” I replied, in a rather loud voice as I was about 15 feet away from the group, “Absolutely, Mr. President.” Then I heard him speak to Secretary Ramos, “That guy there is a Filipino.” I knew Ambassador Reyes and a couple of the embassy staffers in the group. One of them asked me to bring the pictures to him at the embassy, which I did.
Former Philippine President Fidel Ramos is the son of the late Secretary Ramos. When he was still president he visited Jakarta to attend the summit meeting of heads of states of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) member-countries in the Bogor Palace in late 1990s. Ambassador Abaquin of the Philippine embassy in Jakarta arranged for me to present to President Ramos the photos which I took of Secretary Ramos and President Soekarno that day in Bogor. I could not make it as I had to go out of town, so the ambassador sent the photos to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila to be forwarded to the president.
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