Rubbing Shoulders With Two Presidents Part 14
A former freelance journalist who was in Jakarta during “the year of living
dangerously” relates his close encounters with two Indonesian presidents
Indonesia Media / Tom Graciano
 E xactly one year after that, when I had completely forgotten about Ita’s clairvoyant story, on June 20, 1970 news was splashed out that Bung Karno had been admitted into the Gatot Subroto Army Hospital in Central Jakarta. It was said his condition was very critical. We newsmen were not allowed to cover this highly newsworthy development in the life of Indonesia’s founder president. When we found out that Mrs. Ratnasari Dewi would be arriving that afternoon from Tokyo, we went to the airport to try and get some comments from her that we could quote in our stories. But, alas, the security officers prevented us from getting near where she would exit from the arrival terminal. Anyway, no sooner had she arrived than she was whisked away to the hospital. I’m not sure if Mrs. Dewi took her three-year-old daughter with her to see her father, but I don’t think she did.
While waiting for Mrs. Dewi’s plane to arrive, the dozens of newspersons from the foreign and local media engaged themselves in all sorts of speculations about what would happen to Bung Karno. Then, suddenly, as if awoken from a deep sleep, I remembered Ita’s clairvoyant story. I looked all over the arrival hall to see if Ita was around. She wasn’t. Neither was any of the lady reporters who were listening to the story with me in the Bogor Palace in June the year before.
Ita at the time said the police officer told her Bung Karno’s catch-22 medical dilemma would come to a climax in one year. My heart beat faster and faster as I was trying to fight my strong urge to listen to the voice in my heart telling me the man who once called himself Indonesia’s “Great Leader of the Revolution” would soon be gone. I pulled myself together and started sharing what the little voice in my heart told me with fellow-newsmen from the foreign media. There were a few of them around, but I can remember telling the clairvoyant story to Mike Carlton of Radio Australia and Ed Blanche of The Associated Press (AP). They both laughed at me.
The following day it was officially announced Bung Karno died in the wee hours on the morning of June 21, 1970. He had just reached his 69 th birthday 15 days earlier. His body lay in state for several of days in Wisma Yaso. This was to give the multitude of people who still loved the former president ample opportunity to pay their last respects to the great leader. It would also give President Suharto’s “new order” government sufficient time to make a politically correct decision as to what kind of funeral to be given to the deceased and where to bury the body. Bung Karno had made it known while still living that he wished to be buried under a banyan tree in Batutulis, a village near Bogor, upon his death.
 I can’t remember how many days exactly Bung Karno’s body lay in state in Wisma Yaso. I went there to pay homage on the first day with several friends and saw a great number of newsmen among those paying their respects early. I also saw a number of cabinet ministers and other high-ranking government dignitaries as well as some members of the diplomatic corps. There were multitudes of other mourners jam-packing the hall where the open coffin was placed.
When the wake was over the coffin was taken in a hearse escorted by a several-kilometer-long procession of motorcade through various cities, towns and villages all the way from Jakarta to Blitar, a town on the southern part of East Java, the late president’s hometown. There Indonesia’s first president was laid to rest preceded by a state burial ceremony. I watched all these events on TV, wishing deep down in my heart I could be there myself in person.
 Indonesia had lost a great leader, one who had succeeded in unifying the various ethnic groups of the vast archipelago state into one respectable nation, now the fourth most populous in the world. Leaders come and leaders go, which represents a common phenomenon in any country’s political life.
Another not uncommon phenomenon in a country’s political development following the death, the stepping-down or the end of the term of office of a strong leader is the emergence of his or her son or daughter as a new leader of the country, not necessarily immediately though. This has happened in the United States, India, the Philippines, Singapore and Indonesia. Megawati Soekarnoputri, Bung Karno’s second child and first daughter, became Indonesia’s fifth president for one term.
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