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Dilemmas of Consensus and Division: Indonesia’s Search for a Political Format*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
Extract
NEITHER A SINGLE NOR A DOMINANT POLITICAL PARIY EMERGED FROM the Indonesian nationalist struggle. Rather, before the declaration of independence in August 1945, during the physical revolution against the Dutch which terminated in December 1949, and in the subsequent years the nationalist movement has been fragmented into a diversity of political groupings. Even today, after many small parties have disappeared, there remain eight legally active parties; a ninth, the PKI (Partai Komunis Indonesia), is striving to put together an underground apparatus from the ruins of 1965. As each party is the centre of a network of mass organizations, the peasants, youth, women, students and workers are also organizationally fragmented.
The multiplicity of political parties is rooted in the division of Indonesian society into several distinct self-conscious, socio-cultural groupings, the alirans (lit: ‘streams’), whose distribution has changed little since 1945. They are cross-ethnic in nature and mostly encompass a broad range of socio-economic classes. The broad outlines of the aliran pattern become apparent through an examination of two fundamental cleavages that cut across society: one religious, the other between holders of traditionalist and modernist world views.
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References
1 A large part of the information used in this reconstruction was obtained from unpublished trial and interrogation records made available to the author by lawyer-officers of the army. For a detailed recounting of the events, written under army auspices, see Nugroho Notosusanto and Ismail Saleh, The Coup Attempt of the “September 30 Movement” in Indonesia (Djakarta, 1968.) It should be noted that many of those brought to trial had been subjected to torture.
2 Much of the information contained in the remainder of this essay was derived from interviews held in Indonesia from May through December 1967; the informants must remain anonymous. The research was made possible by financial assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation.
3 General Nasution remained Minister of Defence and Security.
4 A well-placed informant said that 430 Diponegoro officers were eventually purged. Official army statements placed the total number of all men purged from the Diponegoro as 1,000.
5 Aidit fled from Djakarta to Central Java early on 2 October 1965. It is not clear what he did there after the first few days, but it appears that he made no effort to organize armed self-defence until after the arrival of the RPKAD. Aidit was captured near Surakarta on 22 November, and shot the next day.
6 Informed foreign observers have estimated the number of dead as high as one million.
7 The unpreparedness of the PKI for underground existence is illustrated by the fate of its nine-member Politbureau. On 1 October 1965, one member was in Peking, where he still resides; three were killed and one arrested by December 1965; one was killed and two arrested during 1966; and the remaining survivor in Indonesia was killed in July 1968.
8 In August 1965, several PNI leaders had been expelled, on Sukarno’s insistence, as rightists. On 5 October they formed what became known as the PNI-Osa, after its chairman Osa Maliki. The main PNI, which retained the loyalty of the overwhelming majority of the PNI, became known as PNI-Ali, after chairman AH Sastroamidjojo. The PNI-Osa participated in the KAP-Gestapu.
9 Suharto was commander-in-chief of the army from October 1965, and holder of the March 11 Order. In addition, he became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence and Security as of the 30 March 1966 cabinet reshuffle; chairman of the cabinet presidium in the cabinet of 30 July 1966; Acting President in March 1967; and President in March 1968.
10 Outside of the army, the only militarily significant group to retain loyalty for Sukarno and yet remain unpurged, is the KKO, the navy’s marines, some several thousand strong.
11 Subandrio was subsequently tried for involvement in the September 30 Movement, and received the death penalty in October 1966.
12 The Pantjasila was formulated by Sukarno on 1 June 1945, and has come to be generally accepted as expressing the five basic principles of Indonesian nationalism. Difficult of translation, they may be given as: nationalism, internationalism, representative government, prosperity, and belief in God the Almighty.