The Bleakest Day

In Djakarta schoolboys filled the sky with kites, and shops, taxis and streetcars blossomed out with flags to mark the twelfth anniversary of Indonesia's declaration of independence from The Netherlands.* Gazing out on the festive scene last week, the Times of Indonesia somberly declared: "This is perhaps the bleakest Independence Day we shall be celebrating."

The Times had in mind the election returns trickling in from provincial assembly elections in overcrowded Java, home of two-thirds of Indonesia's 80 million people. The provincial assemblies are primarily advisory and therefore not very consequential, but as a sampling of the current trend of Indonesian public opinion, the elections were intensely disquieting. In three of Indonesia's biggest cities --Bandung, Semarang and Surabaya--the Communists either won absolute majorities or gained 100% over their 1955 vote. In east and central Java the Reds seemed sure to emerge as the biggest single party, and even in west Java, stronghold of the Moslem Masjumi Party, they had apparently replaced President Sukarno's Nationalists as the second strongest.

Red Respectability. Being the outs, the Communists gained by the government's failure to cope with the problems of poverty, corruption and revolt. But they were also helped materially by spellbinding President Sukarno, who ever since he came back from Mao's China, has been urging "guided democracy" and pressuring for the inclusion of Communists in the Cabinet. (He has already given them seats in his own hand-picked new "temporary" National Council.)

The discrediting of the democratic parties, and the Communist triumphs, seemed not to trouble Sukarno. Last week, in a 95-minute Independence Day speech, the

President made his own "New Life Movement" sound like nothing so much as a South Seas version of Red China's "rectification" campaign. "Our nation, building itself anew, needs the support of a mental revolution," declared Sukarno. "Mentally we must be completely rejuvenated--washed clean."

The Boil. "Democracy without discipline, democracy without guidance has boiled over into anarchy." he went on. "Such democracy is nothing but chatterbox democracy. Freedom that has not yet reached maturity will always be freedom for freedom's sake. It always centers around freedom of the ego."

Then Spellbinder Sukarno warmed up. "Start a mental revolution," he cried. "Throw away all laziness, all egocentricity, all greed, all lawlessness, all degeneration, all luxury, all opportunism, all immorality. The year 1957 is our year of decision. Shall we survive or shall we perish? We have come to the point of no return. As from this day let us launch the New Life Movement. Let us not meet it with cynicism, derision and ridicule . . . because, in truth, the intention is good. It is a movement to forge the Indonesian into a new man--purehearted, steelwilled, with the spirit of an eagle and a soul of fire!"

*Independence did not become fact until four years later.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.