Dilemmas of Indonesian Communism

=== [PDF page 1] === Dilemmas of Indonesian Communism van der Kroef, Justus M Pacific Affairs; Summer 1962; 35, 2; ProQuest pg. 141 Dilemmas of Indonesian Communism Justus M. van der Kroef N MARCH 9, 1962, President Sukarno conferred ministerial rank upon the speaker and vice-speakers of the Indonesian parliament and upon the vice-chairmen of the Provisional People’s Consulatative Congress. Among these appointees were D. N. Aidit, Chairman of the PKI, the Partai Komunis Indonesia (Indonesian Communist Party), and a vice-chairman of the People’s Congress, and M. H. Lukman, First Deputy Chairman of the PKI and a vice-speaker of parliament. Aidit and Lukman will thus attend meetings of the so-called “State Leadership,” a principal executive advisory body, which includes, among others, other cabinet ministers. Technically, the Communists are still not formally represented in the actual Indonesian cabinet itself, but the March 9 appointments might well be considered as having brought the PKI significantly closer to Communist “coalition” government which has been the party’s aim since the veteran Indonesian Communist Muso, then newly arrived from Moscow, announced his “Gottwald” plan for the PKI in August 1948. Yet, such is the peculiar position of the PKI in Indonesia today that this apparent new advance of its leaders, far from augmenting, or being a recognition of, Communist influence in the country, is actually but another indication of how effectively that influence has been rendered sterile and of how the party leaders have been neutralized by the transformation of the governmental structure in the past three years. Ironically, the process of containing the party has been made possible by PKI strategy itself. After the party’s disastrous coup at Madiun in East Java in the latter part of 1948, its fortunes declined sharply and the new rise of the PKI since then (by April 1962, on the occasion of the party’s seventh national congress, Aidit claimed over 2 million members) was made possible primarily by its close identification with the left-wing nationalistic ideology that has increasingly dominated the character of Indonesian government in the past decade. This identification has particularly involved close support for Sukarno and his political mystique. By such tactics as enthusiastic endorsement of Sukarno’s concept of “Indonesian Socialism” and “antiimperialism,” by advocacy of radical nationalist solutions to the country’s many economic problems, and by participation in parliament and in the drive 1 On PKI strategy under Aidit, see my articles: “Communist Theory and Practice in Indonesia,” Orbis, Spring 1961, pp. 43-63; and “Lenin, Mao, and Aidit,” The China Quarterly, April-June 1962, pp. 23-44. 141 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 2] === Pacific Affairs to acquire Dutch-held West New Guinea, the PKI acquired a new respectability, which soon was translated into advantageous tactical alliances with other parties and into successes at the ballot box. The national elections of 1955 established the party as the fourth largest in the country and the regional and local elections in Java (where two-thirds of all Indonesians live) in the middle of 1957 made clear that the PKI had become the strongest party on that island and that its influence was growing in various parts of Sumatra and southern Kalimantan (Borneo) as well. By the beginning of 1958 former premier Sutan Sjahrir of the Socialist party was quoted in an interview with an Indian newspaper as predicting that if the present trend continued, “the Communists might attempt to seize Indonesian leadership.”? The Communist electoral successes, along with undoubted evidence of PKI influence in organized labor (the party dominates SOBSI, which with 2,733,000 members is the country’s largest labor federation), women’s and youth groups, and its readiness to support new and sweeping solutions proposed by Sukarno to the existing political and economic problems, aroused increasing concern in other political groups, notably in the Reform Muslim Masjumi party, the Socialist party, and above all among leading army officers. This opposition crystallized in the emergence of terrorist and counter-terrorist organizations in West Java and in the capital, in grenade attacks on PKI and SOBSI headquarters in Djakarta in July and August 1957, and ultimately in an unsuccessful attempt on Sukarno’s life at Tjikini (in Djakarta) in November 1957. In all these ventures radical army officers, who had long become convinced that Sukarno was permitting the Communists to obtain ever more power, were heavily implicated. During the subsequent trial of those responsible for the Tjikini assassination attempt the following exchange took place between the judge and one of the defendants, Army Lieutenant- Colonel Raden Achmad Nasuhi:® Judge: What was your reason for issuing the bombing [of PKI headquarters] order? Nasuhi: We are of the view that the Indonesian Communist Party is the main source of the present difficulties and troubles in the country. Judge: So the PKI has to be liquidated, isn’t that so? Nasuhi: Yes, that’s right, because the PKI up to now is still washing its hands of any problem of the country. The resistance to Sukarno, to the PKI, and to the allegedly badly managed central government reached its culmination with the flight of Sjafruddin Prawiranegara (Masjumi leader and Bank of Indonesia Governor) from Djakarta to West Sumatra where various dissidents were congregating. Sjafruddin, in an open letter to Sukarno published in the Palembang daily Batanghari Sembilan on January 21, 1958, urged “all Indonesian patriots to stand ready to prevent a repetition in Indonesia of the Hungarian tragedy 2 Indonesian Observer (Djakarta), January 3, 1958. 8 The Times of Indonesia (Djakarta), May 24, 1958. 142 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 3] === Dilemmas of Indonesian Communism and to protect Indonesia from becoming a Soviet satellite.” By February 15, 1958, a new government, the “Revolutionary Government of the Indonesian Republic,” (usually designated as PRRI in Indonesia) had been formed, with Sjafruddin as premier and with its capital in Padang. To be sure, other factors entered in the formation of the PRRI, among them the long standing dissatisfaction in the provinces outside Java with the fiscal policies of Djakarta, but the Communist issue was of major importance, and in its own subsequent publications the PRRI stressed the Communist danger in Indonesia and the ties of the PKI with foreign Communist powers such as People’s China.* Also because of the continuing support of the PKI Sukarno was able to save his tottering regime from total collapse. Soon, however, the army was able to reassert its importance because under the Army Chief of Staff, Gen. A. H. Nasution, and other leading officers, generally anti-Communist but loyal to the central government, an intensive military campaign was begun against the PRRI which by the middle of 1958 had been reduced to conducting only scattered guerilla actions. The army’s success provided Sukarno with a new opportunity to balance the contending power blocs in his country and to reassert his own authority, by proposing drastic governmental reforms which would ultimately end the parliamentary system of government, reduce the national legislature to a rubber stamp, and vest greatly increased powers in the executive, particularly in Sukarno himself. The PKI was much concerned about these developments and the November 1958 plenary meeting of the party’s Central Committee adopted a policy of “popular” participation by means of para-military groups in the army’s struggle against the PRRI, along with further support for Sukarno’s reforms, provided that these reforms carried “the guarantee of a political life for the people that is democratic and healthy.” Thus the PKI hoped to check the rising strength of the army by military mass organizations which could be brought under its political influence and also by continuing to strengthen the President. However, it now began to sound a new note of caution with respect to Sukarno’s policies and proposed reforms. For already during 1957 the President had created a new National Advisory Council to “stabilize” the government, had appointed a new cabinet after a protracted. political crisis, and was becoming increasingly vociferous in his condemnation of the “liberal system of parliamentary democracy,” alternately urging that existing political parties be “merged” and that the party system be “simplified.” The PKI, ever mindful of the necessity of its own freedom of action, feared that further arrogation of presidential powers, a collapse of the parliamentary system, and a possible forcible dissolution of political parties would seriously endanger its own position, particularly in view of the prevailing emergency 4 See e.g. PRRI Bulletin. Voice of Free Indonesia (Macao?), January 1959, pp. 9-10; March 1959, pp. 8-10; April 1959, pp. 18-19. 143 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 4] === Pacific Affairs or “state of war” which had been proclaimed as a result of the PRRI rebellion and which had given army commanders authority to interfere with or suspend all partisan political activity. It was for this reason too that in his address to the November 1958 plenum of the PKI central committee Aidit warned against “the restriction of democratic rights of the people” and that the plenum adopted a resolution condemning “promoters of a military junta and other fascist elements” in the country. Yet at the same time the party realized that the anti-Communist leaders of the army might well be tempted to suppress the party altogether and that the party could therefore not afford to do without the protective cover of the President. Nevertheless, by backing Sukarno the party was also strengthening presidential powers that might progressively restrict the PKI’s own freedom of operation. There had been other developments that underscored the party’s dilemma and there were soon to be new ones. On September 22, 1958, the government announced that because of the PRRI rebellion the general elections, originally scheduled for September 1959, would have to be postponed. The PKI Pollitiburo, two days later, reluctantly agreed to this, warning, however, against the use that might be made of this postponement by “imperialists and rightwing parties.” But in subsequent months the domestic situation led the. government to announce still further postponements, Throughout the first. half of 1959 public discussion centered on Sukarno’s idea that the country should return to the Constitution of 1945, the fundamental law of the original revolutionary Republic of Indonesia, in which there is no ministerial responsibility to parliament and which, in the conditions prevailing by 1959, would provide the executive with almost dictatorial powers. When the Constitutent Assembly, which had for some months been divided over the place to be accorded to Islam in the iegal foundation of the state, was unable to muster the necessary majority to accept Sukarno’s proposal that it adopt the 1945 Constitution, the President on July 5, 1959, dissolved the Constituent Assembly and unilaterally imposed the 1945 Constitution. By a military decree banning all political activities for the time being, Sukarno thereupon began to issue a host of executive regulations, including one which gave him alone supreme powers under the “state of war” and one which required all parties to accept the 1945 Constitution, prohibited them from accepting foreign assistance and stated that in order to exist parties had to have a certain minimum of members and branches throughout the country. With rare unanimity both Communist and anti-Communist parties represented in parliament expressed their disapproval of Sukarno’s high-handed measure. Typical was PKI vicechairman Lukman’s criticism that while the PKI was not opposed to Sukarno’s “simplification” decree, the same objective could have been reached by amending the existing election law so as to set a minimum percentage of votes which a party would need in order to qualify for parliamentary repre- 144 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 5] === Dilemmas of Indonesian Communism sentation, Lukman pointedly indicated also that the PKI's ultimate attitude toward the decree would depend on whether or not it restricted the right of citizens “to organize” themselves. This statement illustrated the growing anxiety of party leaders over restrictions on civil liberties, for by this time the PKI newspaper Harian Rakjat (People’s Daily) had become subject to frequent suspensions imposed by local military commanders who held that certain articles carried in the paper contravened order and security. A notable example was the suspension in October 1959 because the paper had been sharply critical of Sukarno’s Ordinance No. 6/1959 which greatly increased presidential authority in local councils of government. The suspensions rarely lasted beyond two weeks but they. seemed to demonstrate that Sukarno was prepared to give a free hand to the military whenever he felt that PKI criticisms might endanger his own position. The resistance in parliament to Sukarno’s autocratic decisions reached its culmination in debates on the 1960 government budget, in which proposed expenditures far outran revenues. The PKI parliamentary deputies, along with those from all other parties, voiced their opposition to the great increases in experditures. When it began to become clear that parliament for the first time in Indonesian history would reject the budget, Sukarno again acted swiftly. On March 5, 1960, he suspended parliament, indicating that its composition would shortly thereafter be “refreshed.” Protests against this move came from many quarters. In a telegram to Sukarno on March 7, 1960, Aidit declared that “every patriot who upholds basic democratic principles” greatly regretted the suspension of parliament as an event “which seriously endangers democratic life in our country, because it can be utilized by elements who are indeed deliberately trying to establish an anti-democratic and. anti-people’s regime, something which we think that you too do not favor,” and Harian Rakjat editorially observed that “an end should only be put to the task and. activities of the members of parliament if a new parliament has already been formed, for in this way democratic principles would not be violated.”® Aidit urged that general elections be held‘and that the parliament truly reflect “the balance of forces among the people.” ‘The wording of the telegram reflected the PKI’s growing quandary in its relation with Sukarno. The President was not directly criticized, nor indeed was there any reference to the fact that Sukarno himself was responsible for the suspension of parliament. Instead the danger of an “anti-people’s regime” was mentioned and confidence was expressed that Sukarno opposed such a regime. Deftly Sukarno sought to pacify his critics, probably prompted in part by a new attack on his life made on March g (when an Indonesian Airforce plane machine-gunned the presidential palaces) and by the revelation that military 8 Harian Rakjat (Djakarta), March 9, 1960, and Review of Indonesia (Djakarta), April 1960, 145 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 6] === Pacific Affairs personnel again were involved in the plot. Thus it seemed time to “lean on the left” again. On March 27, 1960, Sukarno announced the members of a new parliament of 261 members, 130 from the political parties and 131 from so-called “functional” or interest-groups in society (trade unions, women’s, youth, and professional associations, and so on). The PKI formally had only 30 seats in the new body and the remaining two major parties (the Nationalists and the Muslim Scholars) had 44 and 36 respectively, but a Icok at the roster of the new functional group members showed that Communist influence, if not control, extended itself to at least an additional 25 to 30 deputies, so that with from 55 to 60 followers the PKI had become the largest bloc in the new parliament. Moreover, the two main anti-Communist parties in Indonesia, the Masjumi and Socialist parties, had been excluded from the new parliament altogether because of the complicity of their leaders in the PRRI rebellion and by August 17, 1960, Sukarno was, in fact, to order the dissolution of these two parties. The composition of the new parliament aroused much, if muted opposition, especially among the military and even in the Nationalist and Muslim Scholars parties, groups which previously had not been adverse to political collaboration with the PKI. On June 17, 1960, Sukarno gave way again, enlarging the membership of the new parliament from 261 to 283 members, the new additions now coming primarily from anti- Communist religious circles. For the time being, however, the PKI could congratulave itself that it had retained Sukarno’s support in a period of rapid political change, and that while theoretically maintaining its independence in its program, it had become a formally recognized part of the agencies of an increasingly monolithic and autocratic state. Officially designated as one of the three accepted political forces in the nation, as embodied in Sukarno’s concept of NASAKOM, an acrostic formed by nasionalisme, agama (religion) and komunisme, the PKI now held seats not only in parliament but in all major government bodies such as the Supreme Advisory Council, the National Planning Council, the executive board of the National Front, and at virtually all levels of local government. Though it had no formal members in the cabinet, it had its fellow-travelers there. All this could not have been accomplished without the aid of Sukarno who, in seeking to strengthen his own position, dexterously balanced Communists, the anit-Communist Army high command and other political groups in the country against one another. At the same time party leaders increasingly began to realize after the return of the country to the 1945 Constitution that the PKI was becoming a captive bird in a gilded cage. For despite official recognition of its position and influence the party was more and more being circumscribed by Sukarno’s power and by the security policies of the army which Sukarno endorsed. Independence of action was becoming more and more difficult in view of strict army control over the press and public meetings or demonstrations, the 146 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 7] === Dilemmas of Indonesian Communism periodic suspension of political activity and the continuing ban on all such activity in areas recently “liberated” by the army from the PRRI, the strictly enforced restrictions on strikes and labor agitation, and the army’s supervision of the “functional groups” and other mass organizations in the country. The PKI had in recent years achieved power by identification with indigenous nationalistic and socialistic ideas that culminated in Sukarno’s concept of “guided democracy,” but having thus marched in lockstep fashion with the new authoritarian and collectivist trend of Indonesian political developments the PKI found by the middle of 1960 that it had become the prisoner of these developments; indeed its position as a specifically Communist party with ties to international Communism was becoming increasingly hazardous because of its national orientation. A case in point was the party’s position toward presidential decree No. 10/1959 which provided that as of January 1, 1960, all alien (principally Chinese) traders would be banned from the rural areas of Indonesia, in line with the policy of “Indonesianization” of the national economy. These measures created serious tensions with Peking particularly when Communist Chinese embassy officials in Indonesia urged local Chinese traders to resist. A wave of anti-Peking feeling stirred the Indonesian press, and some of this feeling was directed against the PKI, since its Politburo on November 22, 1959, had urged the Indonesian government to recognize the Chinese People’s Republic’s concern that the “reasonable rights of its citizens in Indonesia be protected,” and had criticized the implementation of the decree also because the departing Chinese traders were rendered unproductive, having in effect been told by the Indonesian government “to go and live without any means of livelihood.” Anti-Communist papers published an allegedly secret PKI “Special Instruction on the Fate of Chinese Comrades” which urged that implementation of decree No. ro be sabotaged. But in parliament PKI deputies were saying early in January 1960 that the party did not oppose the decree since it could be potentially useful to the development of the Indonesian nation, although they charged that some people supported the decree mainly in order to strike a blow “at the progressive groups.” As the Indonesian government groped for a new rapprochement with Peking on this problem and also on the complicated issue of the citizenship of Chinese in Indonesia, the PKI continued to take up the cudgels for the “democratic rights of the Chinese,” insisting on “the principle of equal rights for all citizens regardless of origin.” It criticized the allegedly high-handed measures of the military against recalcitrant Chinese, but also urged again that the government “seriously” implement the decree. For two reasons the PKI could not voice outright opposition to the decree on the Chinese traders: first, opposition would have been an attack on Sukarno who had promulgated it and was known to back it personally; second, such opposition would have been contrary to PKI policy which strongly en- 147 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 8] === Pacific Affairs dorsed a truly national Indonesian economy free from foreign influence and supported the Indonesian “national bourgeoisie” of independent businessmen and entrepreneurs in line with its national front strategy.° PKI endorsement of the interests of the national bourgeoisie was of course intended as an attack on Western capitalist interests in the country, but there had also long been strong anti-Chinese currents in the developing Indonesian business community, a reaction to the old entrenched position of the Chinese in various phases of industry and in the distributing trade. Winning support in the ranks of this nationalistically oriented Indonesian entrepreneurial group (now a major power factor in the politics of free Indonesia) was basic to PKI strategy and to oppose decree No. 10 might well destroy the party’s carefully cultivated rapport with this group and strengthen those anti-Communists who never wearied of branding the PKI as being not a national party at all but a tool of an international subversive movement. Yet complete support of the decree was likewise impossible, for the PKI, for political and ideological reasons, could hardly disavow the Chinese Communist regime, even though that regime, throughout the greater part of 1960 was whipping up an anti-Indonesian campaign at home” because of the decree. The PKI was deeply indebted to the Peking government for its aid in the difficult years after the PKI’s abortive 1948 coup, and during the 1955 national election. In this dilemma the PKI therefore followed a deliberately ambiguous policy which it had used with some success in previous years. It approved in principle but attacked implementation; it indicated general support for the government but criticized specific policies which it attributed to certain cabinet ministers (never to Sukarno personally) or to army officers; and it always tried to place the issue of international amity and preservation of “democratic rights” for everyone in the foreground. In the latter half of 1960 Djakarta and Peking moved toward a solution of the problems posed by the decree and ultimately a new Treaty of Friendship was signed between the two countries on April 1, 1961. But the whole incident had illustrated the new vulnerability of the PKI. Realization of this fact underscored the latent rift in the party’s leadership and set the stage for new and far more serious problems. The party’s quandary over decree No. 10, especially during the early months of 1960, had demonstrated its dependence on the national bourgeoisie and had exposed the weaknesses of a national front policy seeking support also from among the indigenous bourgeoisie. Coupled with the dissatisfaction resulting from the increasing limitations on the PKI’s freedom of operation and from 6D. N. Aidit, Masjarakat Indonesia dan Revolusi Indonesia (Djakarta, 1960), pp. 47-48 and 53°57: 7 On PKI policy, see the Politburo resclution, “Settle the Question of the Overseas Chinese in the Spirit and Act of Indonesian-Chinese Friendship,” Review of Indonesia, Nov.-Dec. 1959; 148 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 9] === Dilemmas of Indonesian Communism its firm support for the new authoritarian structure of the state, the problems produced by the decree reinforced a strong undercurrent in the party for a new and more aggressive policy of confronting the government—Sukarno and the army included—and for de-emphasizing dependence on national bourgeois elements and their political allies. This more radical view, especially associated with the party’s deputy chairman, M. H. Lukman, and with its economic expert and Politburo member, Sakirman, was wholly in line with mounting Soviet criticism during 1960-196 of the role of the national bourgeoisie in various underdeveloped countries, including Indonesia.’ These Soviet attacks, made in authoritative journals, emphasized the ambivalent attitude of the national bourgeoisie toward foreign capital, land reform, and in the united front of peasants and workers; by implication, these views seemed to question Aidit’s oft-repeated policy statements that Indonesia was still in a “bourgeois democratic” phase of her revolution, that attainment of socialism still lay in the future, and that the national bourgeoisie was an important ally in Indonesia’s struggle to realize her revolutionary aims. By the middle of 1960, the PKI leadership seemed ready to assume a more aggressive critical attitude toward the government. For nearly a year the party had already voiced its cautious concern over the country’s economic condition. On November 19, 1959, the Economic Affairs section of the PKI Central Committee had taken note of “growing unrest” among the masses because of existing economic hardships, and in its New Year’s message of December 30, 1959, the Politburo had complained that there had not yet been any signs of measures to improve popular living conditions. On January 12, 1960, Lukman criticized government price policy and in a statement on February 10, 1960, the Politburo again complained about the “deteriorating economic situation.’ On May 1 the Communist-dominated SOBSI labor federation issued a lengthy critique of government policies, noting that the mounting cost of daily necessities was placing them beyond the reach of the public and complaining that the army had prevented the payment of so-called Lebaran (the day which ends the Muslim fasting period) gratuities to workers. In between, on March 21, 1960, the Communist daily Harian Rakjat had been briefly suspended again for having criticized the army-enforced state of emergency laws in the country, which the paper said were stifling the development of democratic and “national” forces. All these criticisms were still relatively moderate but on July 8, 1960, the PK] issued a sweeping and sharply worded “Evaluation” of the government, in which the entire cabinet was attacked for its inability to realize its basic program of providing food and clothing to the people, for its failure to carry on the struggle against the PRRI rebels more vigorously, and for its ineptness in foreign policy resulting in strained relations with People’s China, in failure 8 Georg A. von Stackelberg, “Renewed Attacks on the National Bourgeoisie,” Bulletin, Institute for the Study of the USSR, August, 1961, pp. 3-9. 149 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 10] === Pacific Affairs thus far to regain West New Guinea and in undue sympathy for Yugoslavia and Tito. The entire national economic development was vigorously criticized because the government seemed to be relying on “foreign monopoly capital” and on “imperialist investments.” The Minister of Trade was accused of orienting Indonesia’s foreign commerce in the direction of the “capitalist West” and the Minister of Labor for failing to consider the plight of the workers. Perhaps the most important feature of the “Evaluation” was its criticism of the military: the army was not only charged with dragging its feet in the fight against the rebels, but the army-supervised state enterprises were attacked because of the alleged ascendancy within them of profithungry “bureaucratic capitalists.” Even non-Communist left-wing Indonesian papers seemed editorially embarrassed over what one of them called “the hard punch blows” delivered against the government by the “Evaluation” and as the furore in the press reached a crescendo the army acted. On July 16, 1960, Sakirman was arrested by military police; other PKI leaders (among them Aidit and Lukman) were summoned to Djakarta military headquarters, detained and subjected to lengthy interrogations; Harian Rakjat was again suspended; ownership and further distribution of the “Evaluation” was declared illegal and all published versions had to be turned in by the public to the military authorities; Army Chief of Staff Nasution publicly grouped the PKI in one category with the PRRI rebels as comprising those who opposed the government; and on August 25, 1960, the army command in Djakarta announced that because of the “Fyaluation” the PKI was facing legal action and that the grounds for such action were already under study by the judiciary. Throughout the country, in Palembang, South Sumatra, in Malang, East Java, and in Bandjermassin, South Kalimantan (Borneo), there were public demonstrations (evidently with the approval of local military commanders) urging the dissolution of the PKI. Yet even so, the anti-PKI hostility probably would have died down much sooner had it not been for the fact that in his independence day address on August 17, 1960, Sukarno announced the dissolution of the two principal anti-Communist parties (the Masjumi and the Socialist party) but said not a word about the “Evaluation” incident. Earlier, in an address to the congress of the Nationalist party, Sukarno had already lashed out against those who seemed to have a “Communist phobia” and who continuously pointed to their differences with the PKI, since this would turn them into “rightists.” Speaking of himself Sukarno declared: “I do not fear Communism. I have no leftist phobia. I continue to sleep nicely even if people say that I am a Communist.”® All this was hardly calculated to pacify opponents of the PKI, especially in the army. On August 24 the army command of South Sumatra abruptly suppressed the PKI in that area and all its publi- 9 Indonesian Observer, July 26, 1960. 150 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 11] === Dilemmas of Indonesian Communism cations and subsidiary organizations (among them SOBSI), declaring the party’s objectives to be in violation of those of the state. Military commanders in Southern Sulawesi (Celebes) and South Kalimantan immediately followed suit. An explanatory note issued by the South Sumatra military command accused the PKI of seeking to sabotage the government’s decree on the Chinese traders and the government’s agricultural production program, as well as of fomenting unrest and strikes. With widespread approval for these regional suspensions of the PKI and amidst rumors that the army was contemplating even further measures, Sukarno again acted to restore the power balance. Summoning the military commanders of South Sumatra, South Sulawesi and South Kalimantan to his palace, he virtually disavowed their actions, declaring that it would have been better if they had first consulted him before issuing their suspension orders _ and reiterating the necessity for the unity of all political forces as embodied in his concept of NASAKOM. He again defended the PKI as being loyal to national aims. PKI leaders began to call on cabinet ministers to lift the suspensions, but only the ban on'the party in South Sumatra was lifted on December 22, 1960. Meanwhile Sukarno demonstrated that the concept of NASAKOM was to be taken seriously by (1) appointing Aidit (along with himself) as a member of the forthcoming fifteenth General Assembly of the United Nations, (2) naming Aidit and Lukman to a new council that would review the nation’s new eight-year development plan, and (3) designating Lukman as one of the three vice-chairmen of the new Sukarno appointed parliament. To be sure, in all these posts the Communists found themselves in the company of representatives of other approved major political parties and of the military, but clearly the July 8 “Evalution” had not eliminated the party from participating in most of the principal deliberative and policy-setting bodies of the government. And in his addresses since the middle of 1960 Sukarno has continued criticizing those who suffer from “Communist phobia.” In turn the PKI showed for the time being a new cagerness to carry out presidential decisions. When Sukarno on September 13, 1960, temporarily suspended all political activity in the country until November 30, in the interest of presenting Indonesia’s claim on West New Guinea to the United Nations (and possibly also to forestall any untoward happenings while he was in New York himself), an additional damper was put on the public discussion of the “Evaluation” affair and Aidit cabled all PKI branches to carry out the President's decree “with high Communist vigilance and spirit.” During the early months of 1961 PKI leaders, moreover, prepared to alter their party’s constitution in line with the President’s “simplification of the parties” decree, calling. on all party members to uphold the 1945 Constitution of the country and otherwise stressing the conformity of party aims with national objectives as explicated by Sukarno. On April 13, 1961, Sukarno announced that after con- 151 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 12] === Pacific Affairs sultation with the cabinet, including with Defense Minister Nasution, the government had decided to drop the contemplated lawsuit against the PKI, though he warned that legal action would be taken if the party again violated the penal code. PKI leaders might well feel that they had won something of a victory. But if, by leaning on Sukarno, the PKI had been able to weather the storm, it also had again forcibly been made to realize how narrow the area of its operations had now become, and how a more aggressive policy would spell disaster. Considering the July 8 “Evaluation” controversy in retrospect it seems well to emphasize, however, that the limits on its freedom were the result of gradual changes in the Indonesian power structure occurring over several years, and that comparatively sudden and isolated events, like the outburst over the “Evaluation,” have not been primarily responsible for the present “quarantined” condition of the party. To be sure, as a result of the “Evaluation” the party, its fronts and its publications were suspended in a number of areas (indeed the PKI’s principal theoretical journal Bintang Merah and its English language monthly no longer appeared after October 1960) and the antagonism between the party and the army sharply increased. Yet in a significant sense too the “Evaluation” affair was not the cause but a symptom of the tension between the PKI and the government, that is of a conflict which often seemed unavoidable as each fresh political crisis in the previous two years allowed Sukarno to move forward with the imposition of a near dictatorial monolithic form of government and in which all partisan political activity—however rationalized to bring it in conformity with announced state objectives—became increasingly difficult. The steady emasculation since 1957 of parliament and of ministerial responsibility, the everwidening scope of public power exercised by army commanders in a continuing state of emergency, the tighter controls over press, education and even over religious life, and, above all, Sukarno’s skill in strengthening his own position by alternatingly turning toward the left and toward the right for balance—all these indicated a state of affairs in which the wonder was not that the “Evaluation” furore or something like it occurred, but that, when it did happen, it had relatively moderate repercussions and that, given the tension between Communists and anti-Communists, the acknowledged legitimacy of the party within the structure of government and within the mystique of NASAKOM was not fundamentally affected. Perhaps equally significant was the fact that, although the party had to walk a very narrow path after the “Evaluation” controversy, it seemed not to have lost its inclination to probe and push against the limits imposed upon it. In this “reality testing” the PKI since the beginning of 1961 has increasingly made use of a new tactic, i. e. relying upon its fronts and front publications to demonstrate its independent spirit while the PKI as such remains in the background. In February, May and November of 1961 Harian Rakjat 152 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 13] === Dilemmas of Indonesian Communism was again either reprimanded or suspended by the military for “tendentious” articles, but at the same time the organs of SOBSI, Pemuda Rakjat (People’s Youth) the party’s youth front, and Gerwant, the women’s front, showed a marked aggressiveness, without incurring the criticism of the military censor. All during 1961 SOBSI and other Communist-led trade unions agitated in defiance of local military commanders, now staging a wildcat strike, now occupying Belgian estates in protest to Belgian policy in the Congo, then attacking government economic policies and urging wage increases and improvements in living conditions. On September 10, 1961, the SOBSI chairman, Njono (a PKI Politburo member), bitterly attacked government “inefficiency and mismanagement” and the high prices of food and clothing, while a month later at a congress of Pemuda Rakjat in Djakarta Aidit criticized the poor living conditions of the masses and lashed out again against the “bureaucratic capitalists” in the various government enterprises.° Especially in Surabaya, Indonesia’s biggest port and a principal PKI stronghold, party fronts agitated against military measures to preserve labor peace. Here, as in Djakarta, Communists skillfully exploited the heightened popular tensions aroused by the government's intensified campaign to acquire West New Guinea to stage “spontaneous” demonstrations and Communist-front groups spearheaded the attacks on U. S. consular offices in Djakarta and Surabaya on February 5, and 17, 1962, respectively, to the embarrassment of military commanders committed to the prevention of any unauthorized demonstrations. When the government early in April 1962 was considering a new elections bill allowing the President to appoint two-thirds of the members of parliament with only one third to be elected by the people, it was the Communist women’s front Gerwani which led Communist criticism of the measure and demanded that all members of parliament as well as of local councils of government be elected in a “democratic, direct, free and secret” manner. Hiding behind its fronts not only allows the PKI to act as if it were not formally involved in criticism of government policy, thereby minimizing the chances of reprisal by the military; more important, it brings other, non- Communist, segments of society into its political battles and widens the range of opponents to the army commanders. For the majority of front members are not formal members of the PKI, yet the total membership of all the Communist fronts numbers about eight million and army officers realize that if they oppose or criticize a particular front they are widening a conflict which they are anxious to present strictly in PKI versus anti-PKI terms. It has, therefore, been standard policy of Communist-front leaders in Indonesia to stress their organizational identity. Thus the Communist youth front, Pemuda Rakjat (People’s Youth), was described in the leading international Com- 10 Antara Daily News Bulletin, September 21 and October 6, 1961. 153 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 14] === Pacific Affairs munist journal as “a reliable assistant of the Communist party,” but at the same time as “an independent mass organization of young people which includes not only workers and peasants but also other sections, particularly middle strata.”1! Well aware of this strategy the army, with the tacit support of Sukarno, has since 1957 been creating singe overall control bodies for the diverse functional groups, e.g. youth, veterans, peasants, and so on. The PKI has resisted this development, especially the attempt to submerge SOBSI and other trade unions in a single government-controlled labor organization. Recently the government has not been pressing too strongly in this direction, unquestionably because of Sukarno’s restraining hand behind the scenes. In this respect also the PKI is following a policy of support in principle but of criticism of implementation. The delicate balancing act, involving the army, the PKI, and Sukarno, is nowhere so conspicuous as in the current activities of the fronts. In 1961 it became quite clear what the army high command’s strategy is toward the PKI: to contain it, organizationally envelop it, ideologically neutralize it and thus hollow it out. Realizing that Sukarno would not now stand for an attempt to destroy the party or drive it underground, army policy (especially Nasution’s) is to bring the party openly into all aspects of government (except the cabinet and the security agencies), to invest it with the outward trappings of power but at the same time to surround and strictly supervise all its operations. In this way the PKI’s agitational and organizational influence can be effectively minimized. The party thus will be doomed to wither, while legally it remains in existence, and is even thrown meaningless sops of government participation. When therefore on March 9, 1962, Sukarno conferred ministerial rank on Aidit and Lukman in their respective capacities as vice-chairman of the People’s Congress and vice speaker of parliament, he significantly bestowed the same honor on leaders of the Nationalist and Muslim Scholars parties and on two army officers who also hold similar appointments as vice-chairman and vice-speaker. "To be appointed to the “State Leadership” under these conditions only serves to demonstrate the virtual quarantining of the PKI. How ineffective the PKI has become was demonstrated when, at the insistence of Nasution, President Sukarno on August 17, 1961, offered a formal amnesty and remission of punishment to all PRRI insurgents and other rebel groups in the country. Since the end of 1959 high army leaders had become convinced that an amnesty was the quickest and easiest way to bring Indonesia’s internecine civil strife to an end, and all during 1960 various rebel units had begun to surrender on informal promises made by local army commanders that there would be no reprisals. On February 24, 1961, the PRRI government appealed to all of its followers to return to the “lap of the Re- 11 World Marxist Review, November, 1961, p. 67. 154 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 15] === Dilemmas of Indonesian Communism public” and by the end of August 1961, Sjafruddin Prawiranegara and other rebel leaders had given themselves up. The PKI was greatly opposed to the amnesty which conferred legitimacy on hundreds of its bitterest enemies in the country, but any criticism, however veiled, of “security policy” has brought immediate military repressive action, and under the circumstances the party has been powerless to mobilize opinion against the amnesty policy. Military commanders did not hesitate to rub salt in the party’s wounds by publicly proclaiming that the returning rebels had not lost their voting and other civil rights, and that the army did not feel victorious but only grateful over “the return of our brothers.” During the early months of 1962 the PKI, in line with its policy of being more nationalist than the nationalists, was particularly vociferous in its demand for forceful action against the Dutch in West New Guinea, but Nasution, aware of the logistical problems involved in an armed attack, has been notably more moderate and Communist implications that the army leadership is “soft” on the idea of a “liberation” of West New Guinea have had little impact. Since the army command is by no means monolithic, due to a variety of top-level personality conflicts, the military opposition to the PKI may sometimes seem less formidable, while continuing corruption and incompetence among army officers charged with the administration of various government enterprises provides the PKI with additional opportunities to lash out effectively against “bureaucratic capitalists.” On June 23, 1962, Nasution formally stepped down from his post as Army Chief of Staff, to be succeeded by Major-General Achmad Jani, an ambitious martinet who is said to be more sympathetic to Sukarno’s counsels against “Communist phobia” than Nasution was. Despite his somewhat less than forceful personality, however, Nasution’s prestige is immense, amplified by a campaign (in which Sukarno himself participated) to shower him with new sonorous titles (“Father of Security” and “Father of the Emergent Army”); as Minister of Defense he is not likely to be replaced. Moreover as the campaign to bring West New Guinea under Indonesian control is now achieving success, the army is emerging free from the suspicions which the PKI has attempted to sow about it in the public mind. It is therefore of interest that party leaders have recently been selecting the new diversionary tactic to be used after the West New Guinea problem is settled. This new tactic involves a strong agitation against the contemplated creation of the state of Malaysia. PKI policy in this respect closely parallels that of the opposition to Malayan premier Abdul Rahman, father of the Malaysia plan. Since the Indonesian government is known to look with disfavor on the idea of Malaysia, the PKI finds itself again in step with government thinking though there has thus far been no official Indonesian hostile pronouncement on the matter. At the close of its Plenum, late in December 1961, the PKI Central Committee adopted a resolution (affirmed by the party’s Seventh National Congress in April 1962) branding the idea of “Malaysia” as 155 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 16] === Pacific Affairs a form of “neo-colonialism” and as an imperialist, SEATO threat to Indonesia; the party press since then has continued the campaign. Well aware of how it is accused of leaning on Sukarno as it confronts the army, the PKI has in the past year been concerned also to demonstrate its independence as a party, both nationally and internationally. The party’s Central Committee on December 31, 1960, had first announced that it would not be necessary to convene a special congress in order formally to change the party’s constitution so as'to bring it into conformity with the President's decrees no. 7/59 and no. 13/60 governing the position and conduct of political parties under “guided democracy.”"? This decision had apparently been largely made for the party by Sukarno himself during his consultations with party leaders, and seems to have been motivated by the consideration that granting permission to the party to stage yet another national congress (so soon after the last national congress in September 1959) while public tempers were still aroused over the party’s July 8, 1960, “Evaluation” might be somewhat impolitic. The Central Committee by itself agreed, therefore, to incorporate the required phrases rendering obeisance to Pantjasila and the 1945 Constitution into the party’s constitution and to add a clarification of its concept of “People’s Democratic Government” so as to make clear that this concept does not refer to “the power of the proletariat, but the power of the People,” i.e. the joint power “of all anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolutionary classes.”!* The latter concession presumably was made in order to emphasize the “national” character of the party. Within the party pressure to hold a special congress increased, however, because the party constiution demands congressional approval of such a constitutional change and by the end of December 1961 the Central Committee, noting that “an official request” had been made for formal congressional ratification of the constitutional changes, agreed to convene the seventh congress. Though considerably less of a spectacle than the sixth congress of September 1959,"* and of little actual importance to party policy and program, the Seventh Special Party Congress of the PKI, duly held in the closing days of April 1962, was primarily noteworthy for the skillful rationalizing of party vice-chairmen Lukman and Njoto that Pantjasila, the Constitution of 1945, the Indonesian Political Mani- 12 Decree no. 7/1959 provided that as a condition of its existence a political party had to accept the “unitary” state of the Indonesian Republic, the 1945 Constitution, the principles of Pantjasila (Indonesia’s official national ideology developed by Sul-arno), promote only “peaceful and democratic” procedures in striving for its aims, agree not to r ‘ceive any aid from or give aid to “foreign quarters,” and to have a specific number of branches at various local government levels throughout the country. Decree no. 13/1960 specified that a party should have at least 150,000 members and gave the government additional powers of “recognition, supervision, and dissolution” over the parties. Indonesion Observer, January 13 and July 13, 1960. 18 Madju Terus Menggempur Imperialisme dan Feodalismel (Sidang Pleno ke-Il CC PKI achir Desember 1960 (Djakarta, 1961), p. 38. 14See Justus M. van der Kroef, “Indonesian Communist Policy and the Sixth Party Congress,” Pacific Affairs, Vol. 33 (1960), pp. 227-249. 156 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 17] === Dilemmas of Indonesian Communism festo and other official embodiments of approved political ideology in Indonesia were wholly in harmony with the party’s aims. Sukarno, addressing the closing session of the congress, once again declared that there was no need for the nation to indulge in “Communist phobia.” In his principal address to the seventh congress Aidit took pains to demonstrate also the international independence of the PKI and its “creative” undogmatic application of Marxism-Leninism.’® This line has long been favored by Aidit, but it was considerably accentuated since the Twenty-Second Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in October 1961, where the Sino-Soviet split seemed so significantly to have widened. At this Congress Aidit had been fulsome in his praise for the Soviet Union,"* though he did not join in the condemnation of Albania on the grounds (as he explained after his return to Indonesia) that he had received no instructions from the Central Committee for such a purpose, that he “was not convinced” that such criticism would “make it any easier” to settle existing differences of opinion, and that PKI members, having been educated “in the spirit” of the 1960 Moscow Staternent, “would not have understood what I was doing.” It would be a seridus error, however, to suppose that Aidit and the PKI have unequivocally sided with Peking in the Sino-Soviet dispute. Basing himself on the 1960 Moscow Statement Aidit has in the past year reiterated that the PKI is “an independent Marxist-Leninist party, which has equal rights with other Communist parties, which is not led by any other party.”"7 The squabble over Albania, the dispute between Peking and Moscow, these are matters “internal” to the socialist camp, and for Aidit and the PKI Albania is in that camp. Well after he had unburdened himself before the Central Committee on the happenings at the Twenty-Second Congress of the CPSU, he declared that “there is only one vanguard of the world Communist movement, and let there be no doubt about it, that vanguard is the CPSU.”*® As for the downgrading of Stalin, Aidit’s position is equally “independent:” “It is the right of the Soviet Communists to do what they like with their former leader 18D, N. Aidit, Untuk Demokrasi, Persatuan dan Mobilisasi (Laporan Umum atasnama cc PKI kepada Kongres Nasional ke-Vi1 PKI, 25 April, 1962), (Djakarta, 1962), p. 75. 16 At the Congress Aidit declared that the Indonesian working people had always admired the successes of the USSR, that relations between the two countries were “blossoming rapidly like flowers in spring” and that this springtime was eternal because “no matter what the weather is, spring is always spring” and that neither anti-Soviet slander nor imperialist intrigue could disrupt the unity between the USSR and Indonesia, reflecting the unity of the world's Marxist- Leninist parties which was growing day bv day. Foreign Broadcast Information Service, The 22nd Congress of the Soviet Communist Party. Proceedings and Kelated Materials. Daily Report. Supplement. USSR and East Europe, October 23, 1961, no 18, 1961 (s.1., 1961), Vol. 8, pp. 81-82. 17D. N. Aidit, “It is not a question of who is going to leave but of who is going to enter the Socialist Camp,” p. 80, in Strengthen National Unity and Communist Unity. Documents of the Third Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Indonesia (Djakarta, 1962). 18D, N. Aidit, Political Report of the Chairman of the Central Committee to the Third Plenum, p. 24, in Strengthen National Unity and Communist Unity, op. cit. 157 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 18] === Pacific Affairs Stalin;” moreover, the PKI supports the CPSU in its criticism of Stalin in connection with the cult of the individual; but the services of Stalin to the Soviet Union will never be forgotten, and the PKI continues to appreciate Stalin’s speeches and articles, “such as those about the revolution in the countries of the East, including the Indonesian revolution....”° But the PKI’s policy of conforming as closely as possible to official national Indonesian ideology while stressing its “independence” in international Communism is fraught with theoretical and tactical dangers and dilemmas. If, as Aidit has repeadtedly asserted, the PKI is now placing the class struggle below “the national struggle” (ie., the struggle against imperialism,” such as for example the task of liberating West Irian,” resistance to encroachments of foreign monopoly capital and against efforts to “drag Indonesia into a military pact”),?° then what exactly remains of the party’s distinctive political orientation in the international sense? If in line with current Soviet pronouncements (cf. note 8, supra) and with the general Marxist-Leninist policy—evidenced from the earliest Comintern directives through Mao’s thought, to the 1961 program of the CPSU—of adopting a critical attitude toward the national bourgeoisie, Communist collaboration with the national bourgeoisie and the non-Communist nationalists should at best proceed with great caution, what then becomes of the party’s national line? If Aidit is outspoken in his endorsement of “Indonesian Socialism” and counsels against “Utopian Socialist” tendencies while at the same time drawing a distinction between Marxian Socialism and “Indonesian Socialism,”*! what becomes of the essential Marxist component in the PKI program and idealogy? Again, with the West New Guinea question nearing a settlement, while the economic condition of the country remains extremely feeble, the party cannot avoid a new radicalism in its approach to pressing socio-economic problems if it is to retain its strength, and yet it cannot afford to move too far to the left of Sukarno. The restrictions placed on propaganda among the masses will probably progressively hamper party growth; and general Politburo admonitions (that the struggle to gain control over West New Guinea should not overshadow the efforts to solve the food problem of the people)? can hardly arouse that popular fervor that reflects effective exploitation of popular grievances. Unless the 18 Strengthen National Unity and Communist Unity, op. cit., pp. 80-81, 88-89. Stalin's criticism of early PKI tactics in the 1920's and especially his address on “The Political Tasks of the University of the Peoples of the East” (in J. Stalin, Works, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954, Vol. 7) are standard features of official PKI party history today. Cf. Lembaga Sedjarah PKI, Pemberontakan Nasional Pertama di Indonesia (1926), (Djakarta, 1961), Ppp. 104-105. 20 Madju Terus Menggempur Imperialisme dan Feodalismel, op. cit., pp. 17-18, and Strengthen National Unity and Communist Unity, op. cit., p. 27. 21 See D. N. Aidit, Sostalisme Indonesia dan Sjarat-Sjarat Pelaksanaannja (Djakarta, 1962), esp. pp. 21-37. 22 World Marxist Review, May, 1962, p. 64. 158 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia === [PDF page 19] === Dilemmas of Indonesian Communism party is prepared to “radicalize” its policies, its main hope lies in the ongoing deterioration of the Indonesian economy which, if the party fails effectively to capitalize on it (as now seems to be the case), is more likely to bring a dictatorship of the right than of the left to Indonesia in the future. University of Bridgeport, August 1962 ‘ 159 Copyright (c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) University of British Columbia