Sukarno the Key to Any Revolution in Indonesia (Evening Post, 10 December 1965)

Sukarno The Key To Any Revolution In IndonesiaALMOST OVERLORDS YESTERDAY, ALMOST OUTLAWS TODAY, THE INDONESIAN COMMUNISTS, WHO WERE SO DEEPLY IMPLICATED IN THE RUTHLESS BUT ABORTIVE LEFT-WINS COUP D'ETAT IN JACARTA ON OCTOBER I, SEEM TO HAVE MISCALCULATED THEIR MOMENT, THEIR STRENGTH, THEIR STRATEGY, AND THE SAVAGE DETERMINATION OF THE MILITARY AND THE MUSLIMS TO WIPE THEM OUT. BUT THEIR MISTAKES DID NOT END THERE.The key to successful revolution in Indonesia was the support of President Sukarno, whom the overwhelming majority of ordinary Indonesians — in and out of uniform — regarded as father of the nation. But the odious brutality that accompanied the "September 30" coup at once made it impossible for the "Bung" to back it openly. Six leading generals were done to death, horribly mutilated by doe-eyed girls of the Indonesian Communist Party's (P.K.I.) "Gerwani" women's movement, and their bodies pitehed into a well. Coup-erazed Communist youth danced and sang around some of these officers before they died, capering about in glee at Halim air base in anticipation of the bloody deed to come, when they should have been moving without delay on strategic targets in Jacarta. Moreover, the secret of the coup had leaked, and, although he was in fact sceptical about the intelligence reports, General Abdul Haris Nasution, the anti-Com-munist Defenee Minister, was alert enough to possible danger to skip over his garden wall when the "Gestapo" conspirators came to gun him down. Their failure to kill this archenemy was fatal, and they compounded it by murdering his five-year-old daughter. These acts of terrorism, followed by Communist mass murders in Central and East Java, and the uncovering of P.K.I. plans for burning forests, creating famine, razing the houses of political enemies, for kidnapping, killing and robbing, have destroyed the old "patriotic" image of the party. A disarmed Sukarno has been reluctantly obliged to appoint tough, anti-Communist MajorGeneral Suharto, whom he heartily dislikes, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, and is reduced to making empty speeches about the need to end violence and restore unity, while the Army goes about its own grim business of systematically mopping up the Communist militants in Central and East Java.