THE PARTAI NASIONAL INDONESIA 1963-1965 J. Eliseo Rocamora Reputations once acquired are hard to shed. The stereotype of the Partai Nasional Indonesia (PNI) as an opportunist, conservative party composed of Javanese prijaji elements remains despite basic changes which occurred within the party in the later years of Guided Democracy. Tljis undifferentiated image of the PNI arose in the early 1950's and, for that time, it represented a fairly accurate, though limited, description. As the party began to change under the impetus of Guided Democracy politics and the push of internal party dynamics, Indonesian and foreign observers either disregarded the party alto­ gether or tended to seek explanations for these changes in outside factors." Thus, the PNI's "turn to the left," in the 1963 to 1965 period, was termed variously as: an opportunistic response to the increasingly leftist politics of Guided Democracy; the result of strong pressure from President Sukarno; or the work of PKI (Communist Party) infiltration of the party leadership. The fact that Djakarta's political cognoscenti--journalists and intellectuals--continue to espouse and disseminate this interpreta­ tion reflects biases born of their own political attitudes and in­ volvement. A similarly-limited view of the PNI in Western academic literature is in part the result of the paucity of work on the Guided Democracy period and in part a consequence of an excessive concentra­ tion on a few actors at the center. The generally-accepted framework for analyzing Guided Democracy politics1--a three-sided triangle made up of Sukarno, the Army and the PKI--only explains certain facets of Indonesian politics, that is, the major battles for ideological and institutional predominance. But it disregards the role which less prominent groups, such as the PNI and the other political parties, had in making lower-level political decisions. It explains Djakarta politics but disregards local conflicts. The lack of academic attention given to the PNI after the aban­ donment of electoral politics in the late 1950's, parallels an in­ creasing emphasis on the rising power of Sukarno, the Army and the Communists. But it also results from the tendency in Western litera­ ture on political parties to focus on electoral and legislative politics. Concepts and methodologies developed for the study of political parties apply largely to those parties which function in conditions of electoral competition. Little work has been done on non-Communist political parties operating in countries in which no elections have been held for a long time. The Radical Nationalists--1946-1956 The post-independence Partai Nasional Indonesia was founded at Kediri, East Java, in January 1946, by leaders of Serindo (Serikat 1. See, for example, Herbert Feith, "Dynamics of Guided Democracy," in Ruth McVey, ed., Indonesia (New Haven: HRAF, 1963), p p . 309-409. 143 144 Rakjat Indonesia), an organization formed the preceding December in Djakarta. At the Kediri Congress, Serindo joined with a number of smaller parties from Central and East Java and a few groups from Sumatra and Sulawesi to form a new party, the PNI. The new party was comprised mainly of clusters of local notables (such as, lawyers, civil servants and school teachers) from the larger towns in Repub­ lican areas. Its leadership consisted of former activists in the pre-war PNI, Partindo, and Gerindo, plus a few Parindra people.2 During the revolutionary period, 1945-1949, the top PNI leader­ ship opposed negotiations with the Dutch and generally disagreed with the policies of the Socialist-dominated governments of Sjahrir and Sjarifuddin. They supported the oppostionist front (Persatuan Perdjoangan) created by Tan Malaka, and attacked both the Linggadjati and the Renville agreements with the Dutch. Maintaining strict party discipline, however, proved difficult, and individual PNI leaders sometimes joined cabinets whose policies the rest of the party hier­ archy opposed. Moreover, the party had no organized mass support. Unlike the Masjumi and the Socialist Party, for example, it was never even able to develop an effective para-military affiliate. Except for a short period in 1947, the national leadership of the PNI was controlled by people from the pre-war PNI and the Partindo. Sarmidi Mangunsarkoro,34 Sartono,1* and Sidik Djojosukarto5 2. The pre-war PNI was formed by Sukarno and a few friends in July 1927 . Successful at first, it was disbanded after Sukarno was jailed by the Dutch. In the last decade before World War II, the former PNI leadership was scattered among a variety of secular nationalist parties, the most important of which were: 1) Partindo (Indonesian Party), formed in 1931 by Sartono, who had taken the decision to dissolve the PNI; 2) PNI-Baru (New PNI) formed in 1932 by those who had opposed the decision to disband; 3) Parindra (Greater Indonesia Party), formed in 1935 by Dr. Sutomo, after the banning of the previous two parties, and generally following a "cooperation" policy; and 4) Gerindo (Indonesian People's Move­ ment), formed in 1937 by A. K. Gani, which took a stance to the left of Parindra. 3. Sarmidi Mangunsarkoro was born in Surakarta on May 23, 1904; he was educated at a teachers' school, and spent the major part of the 'twenties and 'thirties as a Taman Siswa teacher. He later headed the education section of the Central Headquarters of the Djawa Hookookai . Before the war, Sarmidi was a member of the PNI (in 1928) and later an officer in both Partindo and Gerindo. He was the general secretary of Serindo in 1945, and, at the fusion congress in Febru­ ary 19 46, he was elected chairman of the PNI. He was replaced by A. K. Gani as chairman in March 1947, and, subsequently, he occupied various positions in the top party leadership until his death on June 8, 1957. He was an active member of Parliament from 1945 until his death. Suluh Indonesia, August 1, 1956. 4. Sartono was born on August 5, 1900, at Surakarta. He earned his law degree from Leiden in 1925. He was vice-chairman of the PNI in 1928, then of Partindo and Gerindo. In 1945, he served as a member of the Serindo working committee, was head of the political section of the PNI Central Headquarters in 1946 and of the organization section from 1947 to 145 dominated the party, giving it a "radical nationalist” orientation and provoking the departure of the more conservative elements. In 1948, senior Javanese civil servants and leaders from Kalimantan and Sulawesi broke away and formed the Persatuan Indonesia Raja (Greater Indonesia Union, PIR). In another split, in 1950, the re­ maining ex-Parindra leaders left and formed the Partai Rakjat Nasional (National People's Party, PRN). With the departure of these groups, the radical nationalists, under Sidik Ujojsukarto, increased their control over the party. In 1950, they spearheaded the drive for the creation of a unitary state, opposing the Hatta and Natsir cabinets. Following the fall of the Natsir cabinet, from which the PNI had been excluded, the party steadily increased its influence in succeeding cabinets. At first, the character of its participation was determined largely by which of its leaders were acceptable to the Masjumi-dominated cabinet co­ alitions. The PNI ministers tended to be drawn from a group of younger men, graduates of the Batavia Law Faculty in the late pre­ war period, who lacked strong nationalist credentials. They shared with the cabinet leadership a belief in the need to emphasize techni­ cal and administrative skills in government. The increase in PNI participation of this kind was marked by the appointment of Suwirjo as vice-premier in the Sukiman cabinet (April 1951-February 1952) and Wilopo as prime minister of the cabinet which succeeded it. Despite participation of men like Suwirjo and Wilopo in national government, the older leaders retained their domination of party councils. Moreover, Sidik and Sarmidi came into increasing conflict with the PNI cabinet ministers since they believed that radical nationalist goals should be given priority over the pursuit of ad­ ministrative efficiency and economic stability. For example, when the Sukiman-Suwirjo government was discovered to have committed itself to accepting US aid under the terms of the Mutual Security Act, the Party Council joined the opposition which brought down the cabinet. In December 1952, at the Sixth Party Congress, held in 1949, when he became chairman of Parliament (.a position he occupied until 1960) . Kami Perkenalkan (Djakarta: Kementerian Penerangan, 1954), p. 66; Empat Windu PNI (Semarang: ~Dewan Daerah PNI, Djawa Tengah, 1959). 5. Sidik Djojosukarto was born in Blitar, East Java, on June 7, 1908. His formal education was limited to high school plus a few years in a commercial school. He was chairman of the Djawa Hookookai for the Residency of Kediri during the Japanese occupation. Before the war, he belonged to both Partindo and Gerindo. He served as head of the PNI in East Java from 1945 to 1949, when he became acting chairman of the party replacing Sujono Hadinoto. He was reelected chairman at the Fourth Party Congress in May 1950 and served until his death on September 8, 1955. Of all the party's leaders, he came closest to being an authentic party hero; his memory is revered by all factions. He was the only party chairman who was comfortable both among the peasant members in the villages and among the elite of Djakarta. Though named cabinet formateur several times, he refused to become a minister, preferring instead to remain party chairman. Suluh Indonesia, September 10, 1955. 146 Surabaja, the PNI ministers in the Wilopo cabinet were severely criti­ cized for their policy of returning to the Royal Dutch Shell Corporation the oil wells in North Sumatra which had been taken over on a tempor­ ary basis by the Indonesian government at the end of the revolution. They were also attacked for their policy of appeasement towards the leaders of the October 17, 1952 attempted army coup. The first cabinet which the Sidik leadership fully supported was that headed by Ali Sastroamidjojo (August 1953-July 1955). The party leadership had exercised more control over the selection of cabinet ministers and was able to impose strict rules on relations between the party and its ministers. The Ali cabinet worked to disband the DutchIndonesian Union and renegotiate existing treaties with the Dutch. It generally took an active anti-colonialist position in international relations. Government resources were used to encourage national (in­ digenous) entrepreneurs. These policies marked a definite break with the course set during the Sukiman and the Wilopo cabinets. But the radical nationalists’ victory coincided with other political develop­ ments which were to lead to their downfall within a couple of years. The Conservative Leadership--1956-1960 During the years of the revolution, the PNI was supported pri­ marily by groups of local notables on Java. When the party began to expand after 1950, it tended to do so outwards rather than downwards, coopting similar groups in areas like North and South Sumatra, North Sulawesi and Bali. As the central government moved to increase its presence outside of Java, the PNI utilized its base in the bureaucracy to organize branches in the government's wake. In addition, in 1951 and 1952, many former leaders of the discredited Dutch-sponsored federal states in the outer islands, who were anxious to rehabilitate themselves and find political security, hastened to join the antifederal PNI . The number of people involved in making party decisions, how­ ever, remained relatively small. Local party branches often had little contact with provincial organizations and even less with Central Headquarters. As a result, the central leadership, under the firm grip of Sidik and Sarmidi, could set the party on a radical na­ tionalist course in Djakarta without much interference from conserva­ tive local party branches. By 1954, the situation had begun to change under the impetus of the accelerating election campaign. PNI leaders became increasingly aware that success in the elections would depend on their capacity to amass funds and to expand party membership in short order. The PNI had control over the key Economic Affairs Ministry in both the Wilopo and Ali cabinets, and, in the latter, also controlled the Ministry of Finance. It used this control to raise campaign funds by exacting informal levies on businessmen to whom its minis­ ters awarded licenses, import facilities and government loans.6 6. Speaking at a conference of PNI branches on January 1, 1956, in Bali, Hardi warned that the party would have to seek new sources of funds for the 1959 elections because of the protests which arose as a result of the use of "special licenses" in 1953-1954. Minutes 147 Patronage was also available through other important ministries. As a result, the party attracted into its ranks a variety of entre­ preneurs whose aims in joining were financial rather than ideologi­ cal. Moreover, in the absence of a well-organized apparatus down to the village level, the party felt compelled to take a short cut by enlisting the support of government officials, school teachers and other local notables who were believed to command votes on the basis of personal ties. As the party admitted more and more such people, its selectivity decreased. Though these new recruits differed little in terms of class derivations or social status from existing members, the condi­ tions of their entry into party ranks did. The people who enrolled in the party during the years when it was out of power joined through a feeling of commitment to a political movement, and their affirma­ tion of party goals and ideals was based on years of participation in the nationalist struggle before the war. The people who joined after 1954 entered an organization that was beginning to look more and more like a Western-style political machine. The influx of these new elements plus the need to elaborate party organization in local areas for campaign purposes weakened the grip of the Sidik group on the party. Sidik could no longer commit the party to specific policies merely by consulting a small number of party leaders at the top; greater efforts had now to be made to include local branches in party decision-making. The party's victory in the elections of 1955 accelerated the pace of its transformation into a conservative political machine.7 A large number of the party's branch leaders now sat in Parliament and the Constituent Assembly; this removed many of the most com­ mitted leaders from local branches,which facilitated the entry of the new, and often opportunist, recruits into local party leadership. Meanwhile, the death of Sidik Djojosukarto, in September 1955, had deprived the radical nationalist wing of its dominant figure. Sarmidi Mangunsarkoro, who succeeded him in this role, did not have the same degree of personal charisma. This development shifted the balance of power within the older leadership back towards such men as Suwirjo and Wilopo. When, at the Eighth Party Congress, in July 1956, at Semarang, elections were held for the party chairman­ ship, the new, conservative elements backed the candidacy of Suwirjo and ensured his narrow victory over Sarmidi.8 of the Conference (mimeographed), p p . 43, 45. An indicator of the expansion of party activities is the bud­ get of the Central Headquarters. For the whole year 1953, it was R p . 540,937.70, while for the first ten months of 1954, it was Rp. 1,842,079.77. Laporan Kongres Ke-VII (Bandung, December 1522, 1954), pp. 44-457 7. The PNI won 22.3% of the total vote in the elections. The next three parties were: Masjumi (20.9%); Nahdatul Ulama (18.4%); and the PKI (16.4%). Herbert Feith, The Indonesian Elections of 1955 (Ithaca: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, 1957), p p . 58-65. 8. Sarmidi lost to Suwirjo by only 93 out of a total of 6,187 votes cast. Suluh Indonesia, July 31, 1956. Suwirjo was born in Surakarta, on February 17, 1903. Educated in Dutch elementary and high schools, he attended the Batavia Law 148 The Eighth Party Congress also adopted important changes in the party's organizational structure.9 The National Party Council pre­ viously had comprised a small group appointed by the Central Head­ quarters, but the revised rules created a new party representative body, the Congress Working Committee (Badan Pekerdja Kongres), which was larger and included members chosen by provincial party committees. It also possessed more extensive powers for setting party policy. These organizational changes had disastrous consequences for the party. The accelerating national crisis after 1957 posed many chal­ lenges, but'Suwirjo and his associates never managed to develop a coherent strategy for dealing with them. On the central issue of the period--the Army-Sukarno anti-party and anti-Parliament drive-they allowed themselves to be pulled from side to side by forces within and without the party. An example of the PNI's indecisiveness and vacillation was the leadership's attitude toward regional dissidents in 1957 and later. In general, the leadership supported the central government position, but never wholeheartedly, because it was concerned about losing sup­ port of its branches in the outer islands if it took too strong a position. The PKI's success in the provincial elections in the sum­ mer of 1957 thoroughly alarmed the party leadership. Blaming the Communists for "political treachery," that is, for "poaching" on the PNI's own electoral preserves in Java,10 they began to look at the Masjumi and PSI as potential allies for containing the Communists' advance. Accordingly, they were worried that the dissident regional movements, in which Masjumi and the PSI were deeply involved, would so discredit these parties that they would be useless as anti­ communist allies. Faculty (1924-27 and 1936-37) though he never attained his degree. He held various jobs as teacher and businessman before the war and was a member of the Djawa Hookookai national leadership. In 1950, he was the Mayor of Djakarta. In 1953, he became President-Direc­ tor of the Bank Industri Negara, an experience which made him generally sympathetic to business interests. Suwirjo served as secretary of the Djakarta branch of the PNI from 1927-1928, then as Partindo national treasurer and head of its Djakarta branch. He was a member of the Serindo working com­ mittee in 1945. When PNI Headquarters moved to Jogja in 1946, he ceased to play a role in the party leadership. In 1950, Head­ quarters was returned to Djakarta, and he served on the Working Committee. He was first vice-chairman of the Party Council from 1952 to 1954, a position which he lost to Sarmidi at the Seventh Party Congress. Suwirjo served as vice-premier in the Sukiman cabinet. Suluh Indonesia, July 31, 1956; Empat Windu, pp. 154222; Orang-Orang Indonesia jang Terkemuka di Djawa (Djakarta: Gunseikanbu, 1944), p. 277. Suwirjo's closeness to Wilopo partly reflected their common experience as students at the Batavia Law Faculty and as teachers at the Perguruan Rakjat, the nationalist school in Batavia, in the late 1930's. 9. Anggaran Dasar-Anggaran Rumah Tangga PNI (Djakarta; DPP-PNI, 1957) . 10. Party leaders could not see that the PKI's electoral success re­ sulted from its solid organizational work or that their own elec­ toral failures stemmed from an increasing identification with the country's corrupt elite. 149 The party's role in the anti-Parliament campaign of the late 'fifties also reflected great vacillation. The PNI was to suffer the most from the decline of Indonesia's parliamentary institutions. But, ironically, it was a PNI-dominated cabinet that declared martial law in March 1957 and thus legitimized army intervention in civilian politics. The party leadership also refused to see that Sukarno's political initiatives were antithetical to its own interests. Count­ ing on Sukarno's identification as the founder of the pre-war PNI, the party tried to benefit from his increasing political power while opposing his specific moves against the party system and Parliament. In late 1958, the PNI tried to mobilize the other political parties into a Front Pantja Si la for the defense of Parliament. The effort was stillborn because of the same indecisiveness that had character­ ized other PNI moves since 1956. I] arly 1960, the party flirted with the idea of joining the Liga Demokrasi (Democratic League), an organization which opposed Sukarno's announced plan for an appointive parliament. The Liga was supported by some Masjumi and Socialist leaders, as well as various army officers. Suwirjo only declared the PNI against it after pressure was exerted by younger leaders. In the end, the party leadership acquiesced in Sukarno's emasculation of parliamentary government in exchange for a few extra seats in the new, appointive Gotong-Rojong Parliament. Radical Resurgence The party leadership's failure to confront Indonesia's political crisis in a coherent way also had severe consequences for internal party politics. During the years of Suwirjo's leadership (19561960), chaos pervaded the party's provincial network. In East Java, one group of party activists openly criticized their provincial leadership. In South Sumatra, and in North and South Sulawesi, dissident factions set up their own provincial committees. Top party leaders, such as Iskaq Tjokroadisurjo and Sartono, were known to hold critical views on Suwirjo's compromises with Sukarno and the Army. The result was a growing challenge to the party leadership, mani­ fested when some left-wing leaders broke away to form a new party, Partindo, in August 1958. Though the new party did not attract many PNI members to its ranks, it presented an effective critique of Suwirjo's leadership which had important repercussions within the PNI. Widely publicized statements by Partindo leaders at the time of the split criticized the PNI leadership for the discrepancy between its rhetoric and its actions. Partindo leaders, in particular Asmara Hadi, questioned the PNI's professed dedication to the cause of the rakjat Marhaen (the common people), since the party refused to act against the landlords, big businessmen and corrupt politicians within its own ranks. Partindo proposed a redefinition of the PNI ideo Marhaenism, which would link it directly to Marxist class analys1 11. Pulihkan Marhaenisme (Djakarta: Badan Pelaksana Koreksi-Konsolidasi PNI, 1958); Asmara Hadi, Rintisan ke Marhaenisme Adjaran Bung Karno (Djakarta: Pengurus Besar Partindo, 1961), a pamphlet con­ taining articles written by Asmara Hadi for Sin P o , dating back to 1958. 150 The Partindo attack followed the lines of Sukarno's general offensive against the party system and served further to weaken PNI resistance. At the same time, the young leaders of the PNI ormas12 began challenging the Suwirjo leadership. This was even more damaging than the Partindo split because it came from within and because these groups were aided by Sukarno and the Army, who had begun to encourage the growth of ormas as another tactic in the campaign against politi­ cal parties. The Army, for example, had organized numerous Badan Kerdja Sama.(Cooperation Committees) as a means to spread its influ­ ence over youth, labor and peasant organizations. Sukarno had forced the political parties to agree to the inclusion of functional groups in the Gotong-Rojong Parliament and other Guided Democracy consulta­ tive bodies. In deciding who should fill the seats allotted to functional groups, such as women, youth, and peasants, the Army, hoping to curtail the influence of the PKI, frequently threw its weight behind leaders of the various PNI ormas. This development gave these leaders unprecedented prestige and made available to them financial and patronage resources which helped them attract new, young, energetic members. With the active encouragement of President Sukarno through PNI ministers such as Sadjarwo (agriculture) and Ahem Erningpradja (labor) and the chairman of the National Council (Dewan Nasional),1314 Ruslan Abdulgani,111 the PNI ormas began to exert their influence 12. Ormas is an abbreviation of the Indonesian phrase organisasi massa [lit. mass organization] and refers to organizations affiliated to the parties and to the Army, such as youth, women's, workers', peasants', intellectuals', etc., organizations. Although they are called mass organizations, the word "mass" in many cases repre­ sents the aspirations rather than the reality of the organiza­ tions ' membership. The major PNI mass organizations were: 1) youth: Pemuda Demokrat Indonesia, PDI (Indonesian Democratic Youth), later Gerakan Pemuda Marhaenis, GPM (Marhaenist Youth Movement); 2) students: Gerakan Mahasiswa Nasional Indonesia, GMNI (Indonesian Nationalist Student Movement); Gerakan Siswa Nasional Indonesia, GSNI (Indonesian Nationalist High School Student Movement); 3) intellectuals, professionals and artists: Ikatan Sardjana Republik Indonesia”, ISRI (Indonesian Republican Scholars' League); 4) women: Wanita Demokrat Indonesia, WDI (Indonesian Democratic Women), later Wanita Marhaenis, WM (Marhaenist Women); 5) workers: Kesatuan Buruh Kerakjatan Indonesia, KBKI (Indonesian National Workers' Federation), later Kesatuan Buruh Marhaenis, KBM (Marhaenist Workers' Federation); 6) peasants: Persatuan Tani Nasional Indonesia, Petani (Indonesian National Peasants' Union). 13. The Dewan Nasional was set up in 1957. It was composed of func­ tional representatives and was intended by Sukarno to undercut the prestige and power of Pari ament and the cabinet. It was responsible to him as chairman but daily leadership was exercised by vice-chairman Ruslan Abdulgani. Though it had no executive powers, it did exercise considerable influence, at least at the beginning. 14. Ahejn Erningpradja was chairman of the PNI labor federation KBKI from 1954 to 1962. He was a member of Parliament as a represent­ ative of SOBSI and a national vice-chairman of Sarbupri. 151 within the party in favor of Guided Democracy policies. In January 1959, the GMNI announced its support for the National Council pro­ posals that functional groups receive 50% of the parliamentary seats, though at the same time, the party leaders were opposing identical proposals.15 In May 1960, leaders from the PNI ormas wrote a statement condemning the Liga Demokrasi and then pressured Suwirjo into signing it; this angered elements in the party leader­ ship who were sympathetic to the Liga.16 Efforts by the ormas leaders to change party attitudes towards Guided Democracy reached a climax at the Ninth Party Congress held in Solo, in July 1960, at which they issued a pamphlet entitled Appeal Djuli i960 (generally known as the Buku Merah, or Red Book), which attacked the Suwirjo group. It criticized these leaders for allowing "pro-federalist, feudal, bureaucratic, capitalist and land­ lord elements" to dominate the party and attributed the party's de­ clining political influence to its obstruction of the drive toward Guided Democracy. The radical nationalists of the old Sidik group joined with the ormas to prevent Suwirjo's reelection and to install Ali Sastroamidjojo, a former Sidik ally, as the new chairman. The ormas' representation in the national party leadership considerably increased. The organ­ izational changes made at the 1956 Congress were reversed, and the national leadership received increased powers at the expense of local party committees. This return to centralized party leadership favored the activists from the ormas because these groups had their greatest strength in Djakarta. It is important to understand the context in which the balance of power within the party was changing. The power of the more con­ servative, provincial notables, who had elected Suwirjo chairman in 1957, was seriously reduced by Army prohibitions on party political activity in the regions after June 1959. Furthermore, the govern- Parlaungan, Tokoh-Tokoh Parlemen (Djakarta: Gita, 1956), p. 41. Sadjarwo, a former officer of the BTI, joined the PNI in 1957 and became second vice-chairman of the Petani in 1959. Empat Windu, p. 221. Ruslan Abdulgani was Minister of Foreign Affairs in the second Ali cabinet. He was not formally active in the party or any of its ormas at this time. Suara Marhaenis, 6, no. 2 (March 31, 1956), p. 7. 15. GMNI Statement, No. 59016/DPP/ '59, January 23, 1959. The forum in which the party leaders expressed their opposition was the Bogor Open Talks, held between Sukarno, the cabinet and the political parties on the changes to be made in the Parliament. 16. The first Central Headquarters instruction to its branches ("Pendjelasan dan Instruksi Sekitar Liga Demokrasi," No. 205/Pol/26/'60, April 28, 1960) told them to remain neutral on the issue. The May 27 statement was made in the name of the PNI and its ormas (PNI/Front Marhaenis). Suluh Indonesia, May 28, 1960 . 152 merit’s ban on party membership by senior civil servants particularly weakened the two most conservative provincial organizations, those of West and Central Java. Lastly, the onset of Guided Democracy and the consequent abandonment of electoral politics, meant that the local influence exerted by these groups was no longer as important as in earlier years. Since the ormas were not formally political, their activities were not inhibited by the Army prohibitions. The ormas were not primarily oriented to electoral politics and, as the political arena increasingly narrowed to Djakarta where they were strongest, so their influence grew. The ormas leaders soon developed the organizational skills and techniques of ideological mobilization which were required for success under Guided Democracy. The more radical groups did not, however, achieve a total vic­ tory. “The election of Hardi17 as secretary-general and Suwirjo as first vice-chairman provided the conservative forces with strong representation in the central leadership. The battle lines within the party continued to be drawn between the faction dominated by the ormas leaders and that led by Hardi and supported by the West and Central Java provincial committees. The new chairman, Ali Sastroamidjojo,18 a consummate politician imbued with a healthy sense of self-preservation, often disappointed his supporters on the left by sitting in the middle. 17. Hardi was b o m in Pati on May 23, 1918. He began work on his law degree at the Batavia Law Faculty and finished at Gadjah Mada; he also spent some years studying in England. He worked at the Pati Residency office during the occupation and, during the revolution, served on the governing council of the Special Region of Jogjakarta. After 1953, he was director of a life insurance company. Before the war, Hardi was a member of Indonesia Muda. He joined the PNI in 1946 and was a member of the Party Council after 1950. He was vice-premier in the first Djuanda cabinet, during which time he earned the enmity of the pro-Sukarno forces in the party for opposing the initiatives toward Guided Democracy. Though in the 'sixties he denied this opposition, his speech delivered at the Congress Working Committee meeting in 1959 shows that his acceptance of Guided Democracy was less than whole­ hearted. Tokoh-Tokoh Parlemen, pp. 56-57. 18. Ali Sastroamidjojo was born in Magelang on May 21, 1903. He received his law degree from Leiden in 1927 and had a private law practice before the war. He occupied various bureaucratic positions in the occupation government. He was active in the pre-war PNI, Partindo and Gerindo. During the revolution, he occupied various ministerial positions. He served as ambassador to the US from 1950 to 1953, became prime minister in 1953, and in 1957 was appointed ambassador to the UN. His election at the 1960 Congress was not based simply on sup­ port from the party's leftist faction; he also won conservative votes from those impressed with his prominence in national politics since the revolution. His absence from Indonesia in the political­ ly volatile years, 1957 to 1960, had kept him away from the fierce battles within the party. He was associated with the radical nationalist Sidik leadership in the party but, at the time of his second cabinet in 1956-1957, he gained Sukarno’s enmity b e ­ cause he supported conservative policies. Tokoh-Tokoh Parlemen, p p . 43-44. 153 The first battle was joined over the Buku Mevah incident. In­ sulted by the unfavorable treatment he received in the pamphlet, Hardi insisted unsuccessfully that its signatories retract their statements and apologize. After this failure, Hardi and his sup­ porters, recognizing the new importance of the ormas in party politics, launched a campaign to capture control of them. At the April 1962 Congress of the GMNI, he attempted to engineer the elec­ tion of an ally as chairman, again without success. The tensions that were created by the campaign spread rapidly to the other ormas. When the Petani held its congress the following October, it proved impossible to elect a new leadership for fear that the organization would split. In the party's labor federation, the KBKI, the tension did result in a split, which developed at the end of 1962 over the issue of the composition of the organization's national leadership council. The immediate cause of the KBKI split was a conflict over the inclusion of A. M. Datuk in the national leadership of this body. Because of Datuk's involvement with the Buku Mevah group, Hardi had blocked his membership in the National Party Council in 1960, and, at the Third KBKI Congress in July 1962, pro-Hardi forces within the federation had forced Datuk's relegation to a minor position in the leadership. Datuk then appealed to President Sukarno, who asked Ahem Erningpradj a, his labor minister and the reelected chairman of the KBKI, to give Datuk a better post. Caught between pressure from the Palace and his prior commitment to the party leadership, Ahem chose the Palace and formed a new KBKI leadership council with Datuk as one of the vice-chairmen. Considering this a breach of party discipline, Ali Sastroamidjojo, with the more than willing support of Hardi, expelled Datuk and Ahem from party membership and sponsored a KBKI leadership council of their own headed by Soerojo, even though the Ahem directorate insisted that they continued to repre­ sent the KBKI in the party.19 The expulsion of Ahem and Datuk represented a significant victory for the Hardi-led forces. The split also affected a number of leaders from the youth organization (PDI) and the university student association (GMNI), who had been associated with Datuk in the Buku Mevah episode. But this victory would prove short-lived, for other forces at work within the PNI would push the party farther and farther to the left in the period from 1963 to 1965. The Tenth Party Congress-^Victory For the Left Wing On May 1, 1963, martial law was finally lifted throughout the country. For six years, President Sukarno and the Army had used it to promulgate laws and decrees known to be opposed by the parties and 19. Ali Sastroamidjojo, "Tambahan Bahan-Bahan untuk Gambaran Objektif Sekitar Kongres KBKI ke-III di Bandung," and St. Rasjid Radja Emas, "Kristalisasi dalam Tubuh KBKI Front Marhaenis," both in Gelora Buruh, 1, no. 1 (1963) ; "Bahan-Bahan Mengenai Peristiwa DPS-KBKI," in, Lampiran Chusus dari Laporan Umum DPP-PNI didalam Kongres ke-X di Purwokerto (Mimeographed). 154 more generally to restrict party activity. But Sukarno's concern with the inordinate power of the Army led him to renewed cooperation with the parties, and it was this coalition that in fact pushed through the revocation of martial law. After May 1963, the parties were able to operate more freely than before. Nonetheless, without elections or formal party representation in the "working cabinet,"20 the parties' activities in the political system remained oriented towards mass action and generalized ideological appeals. The PNI's Tenth Party Congress21 took place in the small Central Java town of Purwokerto, between August 28 and September 1, 1963, in an atmosphere heavy with tension created by a Hardi-led campaign to remove Ali as party chairman. As part of this manoeuvering, at the prior conference of the Central Java Provincial Party Committee, held on Augyst 10 and 11, it was proposed that Ali, together with Sartono and Suwirjo, be made "elder statesmen" (pinisepuh) of the party.22 Then, in an about-face just prior to the elections at the congress itself, the majority of the Central Java branches, along with a few from West Sumatra, issued a statement which said that although they had previously considered nominating either Hardi, Hadisubeno, Wilopo or Sartono as party chairman, they now, "in the interest of party unity," urged Ali's reelection.2324 The change of mind resulted from two factors . First, the Central Java Committee could not count on its usual support from the West Java branches because these were for the moment led by pro-Ali people. Thus, with votes from East Java, Djakarta, South Sumatra, Lampung, North Sumatra and some branches from Kalimantan and Sulawesi, Ali had a good chance of defeating the Central Java forces. Second, and more crucial, President Sukarno obviously opposed the Hardi forces. In his speech to the congress, Sukarno urged that the older party leaders give way to younger men. Although Hardi was much younger than Ali, Sartono, and others, Sukarno was careful to include him by name in the older group.21* The following day, pro-Ali branches sent a delegation to see Sukarno to determine and discuss the impli­ cations of his speech. Sukarno told them that he would not oppose Ali's reelection so long as the remaining leadership positions were 20. The phrase "working cabinet" is used to denote ministers who headed regular departments and excludes ministers without portfolio and parliamentary leaders with official ministerial rank. 21. Information on the Tenth Party Congress was taken from: Hardi, Laporan Umum DPP-PNI; DPP-PNI, Keputusan-Keputusan Kongres ke-X PNl; Suhardjo "Lagu Marhaen Mendengung-Mendengung dari Kota Tempe Kripik," Berita Indonesia, September 5, 6, 9, 10, 1963; Juti, "Beberapa Tjatatan dari Kongres di Purwokerto," Suluh Indonesia, September 7, 14, 1963. 22. Keputusan Konperensi PNI Seluruh Djawa Tengah (Mimeographed). 23. Pernjataan (Mimeographed: September 1, 1963). 24. Sukarno, "Marhaenisme Sebagai Dasar Tidak Pernah Berobah," in Dep. Penprop PNI, Shaping and Reshaping Indonesia (Djakarta: Pertjetakan Negara, 1964), p p . 77-93. 155 filled by younger leaders.25 This encouragement, combined with skillful manipulation of the congress schedule, resulted in Ali's reelection by acclamation, before the time actually set for the elections. Later, five vice-chairmen, a secretary-general, his deputy and a treasurer were elected to form a nine-man working leadership (Dewan Harian). The elections for vice-chairmen were largely a matter of allocating the seats among the two competing factions while maintaining a semblance of geographic representation. Hardi (Central Java), Osa Maliki (West Java), Dr. Mohammad Isa (South Sumatra), Ruslan Abdulgani (East Java), and Subamia (Bali) were elected first to fifth vice-chairmen. The main battle between the Ali and Hardi factions arose over the position of secretary-general. Their respective candidates were Surachman26 and Subagio Reksodipuro.27 Subagio Reksodipuro had been 25. Per Chandra Nainggolan who, along with N j . Ani Idrus, went to see Sukarno. Personal interview, Semarang, June 2, 1969. It seems clear that Sukarno's attack on the older leaders was not based on the expectation that a younger man would take over the chairmanship but was rather intended to weaken Ali's position and force him to accept a rejuvenation of party leadership. 26. Surachman was born in Jogja on August 25, 1926. He received a degree in agricultural engineering from Gadjah Mada in 1961. While a student he was active in the local Petani organization and the party, and he became a member of the Jogja regional legis­ lative council in 1957. In 1959, he was elected secretary-general of Petani and, in 1960, was a member of the Dewan Harian of the Front Nasional and of the Gotong-Rojong Parliament. In 1961 he was on the staff of the Komando Tertinggi Operasi Ekonomi, and, in 1965, was Minister of People's Irrigation. Riwajat Singkat Surachman, October 15, 1965 (Mimeographed); Departemen Penerangan and Gotong-Rojong Parliament Secretariat biographic files. After the October 1, 1965 coup, Surachman was accused of beine a PKI infiltrator. Though one cannot know for sure, the evidence available does not support this conclusion. His extensive writings in the PNI paper Suluh Indonesia do not betray any trace of the PKI style of writing or thinking. His support of the Fifth Force idea and his ambivalence on aksi sepihak is under­ standable, since he was totally devoted to Sukarno whose position on these two issues was also ambivalent. Surachman's capture and subsequent death from wounds inflicted by an Army patrol in the South Malang-Blitar area in July 1968, an area where the PKI tried to set up a base for armed struggle, is not necessarily proof that he was a PKI member before 1965. He was a fugitive beginning in February 196§ and it would have been natural for him to join other fugitives, regardless of political affiliation. It would also have been logical for him to hide in the South MalangBlitar area, where he had served during the revolution with the student army of East Java (TRIP). 27. Subagio was born in Bodjonegoro, East Java, on April 10, 1914 but was associated with the West Java leadership group in the party. His education at the Batavia Law Faculty and his experi­ ence as a teacher at the Perguruan Rakjat in Djakarta gave him 156 associated with the Hardi group in past party conflicts. He had a much longer experience in the national party leadership than Surachman, but was unpopular because of his reputation for aloofness. Surachman, at the time of the Congress, was secretary-general of Petani. He had a reputation as a quiet and hard-working young man. Although he had signed the Buku Merah in 1960, since then he had not been actively involved in intra-party conflicts. He was included as one of the young men Sukarno recommended for leadership and also in the Central Java Committee's list of prospective members for the National Party Council.28 This victory over Subagio Reksodipuro, by the narrow margin of two out of some 600 total votes, clinched the victory for the Ali faction. Ali, Surachman, Ruslan Abdulgani, and S. Hadikusumo (treasurer) later drew Dr. Isa and Subamia into their circle, leaving Hardi, Osa Maliki, and Isnaeni (deputy secretary-general) an isolated minority in the new nine-man Dewan Harian. One of the reasons why the Hardi group did not oppose the Ali faction more vigorously was a growing fear of a major party split caused by continuing tension over the crisis in the KBKI. The Dewan Pimpinan Sentral KBKI (DPS-KBKI, Central Leadership Council) of the Datuk-Ahem faction seemed to be gaining the upper hand over the partysponsored Dewan Pimpinan Pus at KBKI (DPP-KBKI Central Leadership Council), under Soerojo, in the campaign to capture the federation's provincial branches and member unions. The DPS-KBKI had refused to leave the party formally because it expected President Sukarno's sup­ port in a showdown at the Purwokerto Congress,29 an expectation that seemed justified when Ahem and Datuk turned up at the congress as members of President Sukarno's entourage. Conditions within the party, however, resulted in the unexpected. Both Ahem and Datuk had been respected left-wing leaders of the PNI since the late 'fifties, but after the KBKI split in September 1962, they had supported the position that the ormas should be kept as in­ dependent as possible from the party. While left-wing elements had previously adopted this stance to prevent interference from the rightwing party leadership as they consolidated their own positions within the ormas, by the time of the Purwokerto Congress, the power and stake of the ormas in the party had improved to such an extent that the people who would once have been natural allies of Ahem and Datuk now abandoned them to promote party solidarity. good contacts and similar attitudes with the Wilopo-Hardi group. From 1950 to 1954, he was national chairman of the Pemuda Democrat Indonesia. He was a member of the National Party Council beginning in 1951 and a member of the Congress Working Committee from 1960 to 1963. He represented West Java in Parliament. Tokoh-Tokoh Parlemen, p p . 90-91; Suara Marhaenis, 7, no. 9 (May TT, "195 7), p'. 17. 28. Keputusan Konperensi PNI Seluruh Djawa Tengah, August 10-11, 1963 (Mimeographed) . 29. "Laporan Singkat Sidang Paripurna DPS-KBKI," May 6-8, 1963, Djakarta (Typescript). The need for unity between the party and its ormas formed the theme of the Chairman Ali Sastroamidjojo's opening speech to the congress.30 For the first time in the history of the party's con­ gresses, the chairman devoted a large segment of his speech to a survey of ormas activities. He outlined the steps that had been taken against the DPS-KBKI leadership and noted with satisfaction that younger KBKI leaders had assumed the task of regaining the fed­ eration's lost member unions and branches. The new ascendancy of younger, left-wing elements in the PNI was not only revealed by their success in the elections for the Dewan Harian but also in the changes which the congress accepted in the formulation of party ideology and in party organization. Nationalism in Search of an Ideology The PNI's official ideology has never embodied a coherent and comprehensive political philosophy. Ideological consistency has always been subordinated to the changing needs of the party. Marhaenism (the official name for the party's ideology), as originally formulated by Sukarno and his associates in the late 'twenties and early 'thirties, was a heterogeneous political doctrine which contained both radical and conservative elements within it. It was radical to the extent that it contained a critique of Dutch colonialism derived from the Leninist theory of imperialism and emphasized the inherent contradiction between the colonized peoples of the world and the established imperial powers. It was conserva­ tive to the extent that it rejected a Marxist class analysis of Indonesian society and, instead of the Marxist categories of workers and peasants, posited a generalized kaum Marhaen (common man) as the basis for its political action. The main theme of Marhaenist doctrine was the need for national unity of all groups against the colonial power and the propagation of the ideas of socialism, nationalism and democracy in opposition to colonial capitalism, racism and repression. After independence, the inherent tension between the radical and conservative elements in Marhaenist doctrine, largely latent in the colonial period, be­ came increasingly manifest, as shown in the first formal statement of party ideology by the post-war PNI, issued after the Sixth Party Congress in 1952. The statement begins with a critique of Dutch colonialism which is radical in the classic vein, but when it turns to a discussion of post-independence Indonesian society, the conser­ vative element is only too evident. The 1952 statement continues to use the concept of rakjat Marhaen in a completely holistic and undifferentiated way, lumping together the rural proletariat with propertied peasants; the unem­ ployed with government clerks; urban labor with small traders. Even the group categorized as the top nine percent of society31 escapes 30. Ali Sastroamidjo, Bulatkanlah Front Marhaenis dalam Ideologinja dan Organisasinja (Deppenprop DPP-PNI, pamphlet). 31. The statement divides post-colonial Indonesian society into: 2% at the top, who live comfortably; 71, who have enough; and 911 poor peasants, small traders, laborers, and lower government employees, who live in conditions of abject poverty. Pendjelasan Marhaenisme (DPP-PNI, 1952). 158 identification as the enemy of the rest. In outlining the goals of peasant organizations, the statement evades the issue of land reform with an innocuous phrase and the will-o'-the-wisp of transmigration. It denies any basic antagonism between labor and management by urging labor to produce more so that they will "deserve" increased wages. While it calls for organizational work among peasants, laborers, youth and women, it betrays its statist orientation in its emphasis on government-initiated reform rather than mass action. To explain why PNI ideology in this period had not gone far be­ yond the pre-war PNI in terms of precision and clarity, the role of ideology in the life of the PNI must be understood. It was not a doctrine in which aspiring leaders had to verse themselves and by which they had to live, as in the case of the PKI; rather, it was a cluster of symbols used to legitimize a leadership whose qualifica­ tions were, in many cases, ascriptive status and generalized local influence. In other words, the ideology was designed to persuade the electorate of the high quality of party leadership rather than to mobilize them on the basis of their own grievances. The ideology also served practical electoral aims--the party praised everyone and attacked no one inside the Indonesian system, since it was seeking to attract as large an electoral coalition as possible, regardless of the inherent incompatability of the components of such a coalition. By its ideology, the party was not making a political declaration of its future plans but rather searching for a common political denomina­ tor that would elevate it to and maintain it in power. After the death of the election-based parliamentary system, the conditions for party competition changed, and the role of ideology in party life began to change also. Ideology now became a tool used to politicize and to mobilize the masses, not for occasional elections but on a permanent basis. But change did not come easily to many older party leaders. The new uses of ideology were foreign to their experience and their training. Thus the change in PNI ideology paralleled the changing composi­ tion of the party leadership. During Suwirjo's chairmanship, from 1956 to 1960, an attempt to elaborate on the 1952 formulation of party ideology failed, partly a result of severe disagreements over the issues raised by the transition to Guided Democracy. The first serious proponents of ideological renovation were the men who eventual ly formed Partindo in 1958. They wanted a more rigorous Marxist interpretation of Indonesian social and political reality. After Partindo was formed, its criticisms of the PNI were taken up by elements in the PNI's ormas. The Buku Merah specifically con­ demned the influx of "liberal" and "bureaucratic" elements into the party leadership. The earliest and most consistent source of new ideas within the PNI was the party's university student organization, the GMNI. The GMNI was the most dynamic of the party's ormas and, by 1963, its cadres and former members had begun to establish a foot­ hold in the leadership of other ormas and the party's local committees As early as February 1959, the GMNI national conference at Kaliurang, Jogjakarta, approved a document called "Beberapa Thesis Pedoman Garis Perdjoangan" (Some Theses as Guidelines for Struggle), which estab­ lished ideological guidelines that were to culminate in the Deklarasi Marhaenis of November 1964. The GMNI statement contrasted with the older leadership's penchant for conciliatory fence-sitting: In the revolution, we recognize two types of persons and groups, a person or group that is actively for the 159 revolution and a counter-revolutionary. The revolution does not recognize a dual personality, for commitment to the revolution is total and absolute. It does not recognize compromise, for it is compromise which ob­ structs and eventually causes the failure of the revolu­ tion . Thus we must consciously and firmly separate the revolu­ tionary from the counter-revolutionary types. A politics of isolation, of separating counter-revolutionaries from the masses,is an absolute necessity. The document then identified counter-revolutionary types as: . . . Capitalists, landlords, compradors, federalists, “conservative-orthodox-doctrinaire-formalist" bureaucrats, opportunist and corrupt politicians and economic specu­ lators. The most important revolutionary element is labor youth. The revolutionaries also include poor peasants, members of the armed forces, and poor intel­ lectuals. Counter-revolutionary elements must be purged from the party. Although control over govern­ mental institutions is important, a major part of party energies must be devoted to work among the masses in order to prevent isolation from them. To do this, the party must seriously train cadres to lead the mass organizations. The party as a whole was slow to accept these ideas; for example, the Ninth Party Congress in 1960 condemned the Buku Merah, and in January 1962, the party prohibited its ormas from making statements on Marhaenism without prior consultation with the party.32 In response to the ideological challenges from within and from without, the party limited itself to reasserting the identity of Marhaenism with the ideology of Guided Democracy as formulated by President Sukarno, and giving Sukarno the title of "Father of Marhaenism" at the 1960 Congress.33345 The official reformulation of Marhaenism, Dasar-Dasar Pokok Marhaenisme ,3tt emphasized the similar­ ities between Marhaenism, Pantja Sila, and the Political Manifesto of 1959. The first clear break came in July 1963, when Ali, at the 36th anniversary celebrations of the party, defined Marhaenism as "Marxism adapted to Indonesian conditions."55 Though often de­ rided by outsiders, this definition helped considerably in gaining the acceptance of ideas which would otherwise have been rejected out-of-hand as communist by the party's provincial following. The definition itself was formally accepted at the Tenth Party Congress 32. Instruction No. 048/Pol/003/'62, January 22, 1962. 33. Risalah Lengkap Kongres ke-IX PNI, July 25-29, 1960, Surakarta (Mime ographe d). 34. DPP-PNI, Dasar-Dasar Pokok Marhaenisme (Djakarta: Pertjetakan Suluh Indonesia, 1961). 35. Suluh Indonesia, July 3, 1963. Sukarno first used this defini­ tion m 1958. 160 in 1963. The new "Keterangan Azas dan Tudjuan PNI" approved by the Congress adopted the nine theses of the pre-war Partindo, focussing on the workers and peasants as the leading forces in the Marhaenist struggle. New themes in party propaganda and indoctrination re­ flected the changes. Speeches by party leaders during this time con­ verged on the need to "return to the masses" (kembali kepada Marhaen), to "unite the party and the ormas in a strong Marhaenist Front," and to "build the PNI into a vanguard party." These developments culminated in the adoption of the Deklarasi Marhaenis at the Congress Working Committee meeting at Lembang (Bandung), in November 1964.36 The statement said: There is no revolutionary movement which is not based on revolutionary theory. Marhaenism is a revolutionary theory based on mass action. As such, the conditions of the Marhaenist struggle must be revolutionary and grounded on a two-phase conception of the revolution. The first is the national democratic phase and the second, the socialist phase. Because of this, the struggle must be led by the peasantry and labor. The PNI/Front Marhaenis is an instrument of the revolu­ tion, based on workers and peasants, and led by the proper [tepat] elements. In order to achieve the victory of the masses [kaum Marhaen], they must be organized in a Marhaenist Front which is dynamic, militant, radical, disciplined and totally dedicated to the cause of the masses . The PNI/Front Marhaenis must teach, guide, and prepare the masses for the daily struggle. It must become the vanguard leadership of the masses. In short, the PNI/ Front Marhaenis is the "concretization" of the Marhaenist ideology formulated by Bung K a m o as the avant-garde of the struggle of the Marhaenist masses. We believe that without revolutionary mass action by the Marhaen masses there will never be a social transformation that will reach the upper levels of society. The rhetoric of the Deklarasi Marhaenis was not simply a tactical response to the ideological climate of Guided Democracy; it signalled real changes in party attitudes toward basic issues. Whereas previously the PNI had tended to blame the Dutch for most of the country’s ills, the party now began to identify domestic conditions and groups which in its view facilitated imperialist intrusion. With the acceptance of Marxist formulas, the party began to move away from the middleground, to identify its friends and its enemies. As a result, the PNI began to take its ormas increasingly seriously and to direct more of its efforts towards mass action. Some have ascribed the ideological change in the PNI to Sukarno’s influence or to PKI infiltration, and, no doubt, the new PNI ideologi­ cal language closely followed the pattern set earlier by Sukarno and 36. PNI Penegak Pantja Sila (Djakarta: Deppenprop, DPP-PNI, 1965), p p . 2-8. 161 the PKI. But more important, Sukarnofs Guided Democracy and the PKIfs successes had forced changes in the framework of party com­ petition. By indefinitely postponing elections and encouraging the growth of ormas,Sukarno facilitated the entry of new, young leaders into the PNI. These new leaders from the party’s ormas had skills which suited them to the Guided Democracy political world. As a rule, their class position was only slightly below that of the older party leaders. But in the Indonesia of the late ’fifties and early ’sixties, when social position and its perquisites were constantly threatened by a declining economy and an increasingly radical at­ mosphere, their lives must have seemed much less secure than had those of previous generations. Moreover, the good positions in the bureaucracy, imperative for elite status in Indonesia, were in in­ creasingly short supply. For the politically conscious young man in the ’sixties, the continuing deterioration of the economy and the obvious failure of the older national leadership to fulfill the promises of the revolution provided sufficient motivation to search for new ideological formulas. The PNI and Land Reform The PNI’s differing roles in the three major issues of the later Guided Democracy period--economic policy, Confrontation and land reform--illustrate its position in the politics of that time. The formulation and implementation of Confrontation and economic policies were concentrated in Djakarta, where Sukarno and the Army were the dominant political actors. These two issue-areas were also those which, because of their international repercussions, attracted the attention of foreign observers. Land reform, however, was not only an issue of prime interest to a majority of the Indonesian people, but one which had to be worked out concretely outside Djakarta in the rural areas. It is precisely in provincial politics that the limitations of studies of Indonesian politics which focus on the Sukarno-Army-PKI triangle are most conspicuous. Land reform, as with many other Guided Democracy issues, was an amalgam of radical rhetoric and conservative reality. The Land Re­ form Law (Law Number 5/1960), which replaced the old Netherlands East Indies Law of 1870, was proclaimed on September 24, 1960. Un­ like much of the legislation during Guided Democracy, the Land Reform Law resulted from extensive discussion, first in the Supreme Advisory Council (DPA) and later in the Gotong-Rojong Parliament. These discussions produced a compromise between PKI-led forces, which wanted rigorous land reform based on the principle of ’’land to the tiller,” and their opponents, led by the religious groups, who argued that proprietary rights in land are inalienable according to Indone­ sian traditional law. Sadjarwo, the PNI Minister of Agriculture and Petani second vice-chairman, proposed a compromise based on a minimum and maximum amount of hectarage allowed per family.37 This draft was eventually accepted. In December 1960 , Emergency Law 56/’60 proclaimed the govern­ ment’s obligation ”to endeavor to provide every peasant family with 37. The main outlines of this draft were approved at the Petani Working Congress meeting in April 1960 at Bogor. Suluh Indonesia, April 20, 1960. 162 a minimum of two hectares of arable land," and to set maximum limits on private land based on population density. In Java and Bali, the maximum for irrigated land was set at five hectares and for dry land at nine hectares per family. The law excluded land owned by religious institutions and communal land allocated for use by village functionaries. It offered many loopholes for landlords. Large landholdings were divided among members of extended families or hidden in the land registers as mosque, religious school or temple land. The local land reform committees themselves were often dominated by landlords and. their sympathizers.38 The PNI was in a strong position to influence the success or failure of the land reform program, since Sadjarwo's position as Minister of Agriculture and PNI domination of local governments in Java and^Bali gave it a powerful say in the composition and activ­ ities of"local land reform committees. The party was deeply divided on how this position was to be utilized. The issue very rapidly showed how much power right-wing provincial leaders retained in spite of left-wing dominance at the center. In the first instance, the initiative lay with the provincial leadership. In Central Java, East Java and Bali, where the PNI had many members and supporters among the land-owning groups, local party committees used their influence to help landlords circumvent the law. On the other hand, in Djakarta, the younger leadership of Petani and the party joined in.the mounting criticism of the progress of the land reform program. As early as September 1962, the secretary-general of Petani, and later of the party, Surachman, urged that farmers take their own steps to implement land reform be­ cause its opponents were still too strong.39401 In 1964, he began to affirm the principle of "land to the tiller" in his writings and speeches and to attack local land reform personnel for their apathy and their collusion with the landlords. To assist the implementa­ tion of the program, he urged that village government be "democratized" and that tanah bengkok (communal land allocated for use of the vil­ lage headmen) be a b o l i s h e d 0 At the Central Party Council meeting on February 8, 1964, Mohammad Djambek complained that, in several places, land was not being divided among landless peasants but in­ stead among friends and relatives of the land reform committee mem­ bers.1*1 The resulting tension between the PNI's young leaders at the Central Party Headquarters and the local party leadership was further exacerbated in 1964 and 1965 by the increasing incidence of aksi sepihak (unilateral actions) in the countryside. The aksi sepihak was a logical outcome of the discrepancy between the radical rhetoric and the conservative reality of land reform. The rhetoric had raised expectations among Indonesia's landless 38. Much of the preceding discussion is based on E. Utrecht, "Land Reform in Indonesia," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 5, no. 3 (November 1969), p p . 71-88. 39. Surachman, "Nasib Kaum Tani Tergantung pada Kaum Tani Sendiri," Suluh Indonesia, September 9, 1962. 40. Suluh Indonesia, January 1, 22, 1964. 41. "Minutes of the meeting" (Typescript). 163 peasants--expectations soon confounded by the reality of slow and corrupt land reform committees. Encouraged and often led by the Communist Barisan Tani Indonesia (Indonesian Peasant League, BTI) , bands of landless peasants began to take matters into their own hands. They forcibly occupied disputed lands or else refused to turn the harvest over to landlords or creditors. In response, land­ lords and rich peasants formed their own armed bands and turned to the PNI or NU for help. In the resulting clashes, police and army units often sided with the landlords. The aski sepihak took place primarily in Central Java, East Java and Bali, and provoked a violent anti-Communist response from local PNI leadership. In Central Java, the provincial leadership used the aksi sepihak issue to attack the PKI with increasing open­ ness. While consciously defending the landlords, they also accused the PKI of using aksi sepihak as a way to discredit PNI lurah (village headmen) and draw away Petani membership. At an emergency conference of the Central Java branches in late October 1964, the provincial leadership instructed all party branches and ormas to issue public statements attacking aksi sepihak and to cooperate with the police and the army in suppressing it.1+2 In April 1965 , this campaign cul­ minated in the publication and wide distribution of a pamphlet, popu­ larly known as the Buku Putih (White Book), the most violent public attack on the PKI during this period.42345 In East Java, where the NU was strong, the PNI often cooperated with it against the PKI. In Banjuwangi, the PNI and NU worked to­ gether to oust the bupati . whom they accused of continually favoring the BTI in land disputes. 4 In Kediri, after a series of clashes, the PNI and NU branches issued a joint statement urging the govern­ ment to take firm steps against the organizers of aksi sepihak, and stating that if such steps were not immediately taken, neither party would consider itself responsible for any future ”incidents .1,45 In Bali, the PNI was increasingly challenged by a small but active PKI organization and a governor known to be sympathetic to the Communists. PNI control over local administration proved of no avail with a governor apt to cancel the decisions of pro-PNI local administrators. By late 1964, the confrontation between the two parties over the land problem was so tense that armed clashes had be­ come a frequent occurrence.46 42. ’’Kesatuan Gerak Menghadapi Kaum Munafik Kepala Batu," Decision of the Emergency Conference, Central Java Provincial Committee, October 24- 25 , 1§64 (Mimeographed). 43. DPD-PNI Djawa Tengah, Adjakan PNI-Front Marhaenis Djawa Tengah. 44. Pendjelasan Umum NU-PNI Sekitar Latar Belakang Politik Penolakan Soewarso Kanapi SH (Mimeographed, January 28 , 1965) ; Suluh Indonesia, January 8 , 1965. 45. Pernjataan Bersama PNI dan NU (Mimeographed, February 23, 1965); Pernjataan Bersama PNI dan NU (Mimeographed, April 21, 1965). 46. DPD-Daerah Bali, Ketegangan-Kegawatan-Kekatjauan Akibat Ketiadaan Kepemimpinan Gub./KDH Bali, A. A. Bagus Sutedja (Mimeographed). In most cases, the PNI sided with the landowner against the tenant, who was supported by the PKI, though it was claimed that 164 The virulence of the PNI provincial organizations1 attacks on the PKI embarrassed the partyTs national leadership. The Central Headquarters had publicly opposed aksi sepihak because it "threaten­ ed Nasakom unity" and "weakened the revolutionary forces," but the provincial PNI committees had gone beyond attacking aksi sepihak and had launched a more generalized offensive against the PKI. This opened the party to charges of "Komunisto-phobie" and endangered its campaign to improve relations with President Sukarno. Beyond immedi­ ate considerations of tactics, however, genuine confusion existed in the ranks of the PNI national leadership about how to deal with the aksi sepihak issue. The younger leaders, frustrated by the short­ comings of the land reform machinery, had joined with the PKI in demanding representation for peasant organizations on the land re­ form committees and courts set up in 1964. But they also felt that the PKI had gone too far in pushing aksi sepihak, that it was using peasant frustration as an instrument against the PNI, and that it was undermining Nasakom solidarity.1*7 The party newspaper, Suluh Indonesia , stated in an editorial on June 17: "Maybe aksi sepihak will benefit peasants in a few places temporarily. But it is ques­ tionable whether it will benefit our revolution in the long run." In June 1964, the government prohibited aksi sepihak and ban­ ned all polemic on it. In December, it forced all political parties to issue a declaration that they would refrain from divi­ sive and tension-creating activities. But neither measure stemmed the tide of conflict in the countryside that aksi sepihak had pro­ voked. The national PKI leadership itself could not control the BTI and its rural cadres. In the PNI, the continuing provincial attacks on the PKI were eventually to precipitate a purge of the Central Java leadership in May 1965 and a national purge the fol­ lowing August. The PNI and the PKI The PNI has always had ambivalent feelings toward the PKI. The Communist Party has been, all at once, villain and hero, enemy and sage--to be feared, yet also to be emulated. It has been seen as a threat to PNI interests and, at the same time, an ally against common enemies. The PNI, as the main representative of Indonesia's post-colonial elite, had much to fear from the PKI. By using class antagonisms and economic conflict as a basis for organizing among the masses, the PKI threatened to break the traditional hold which the provin­ cial prijaji had over the peasantry and through which the PNI had built up its electoral following. But at the same time, as a secular and a Javanese party, the PKI represented a natural ally against the Masjumi and its Islamic and outer island backers. The47 the landowner was a poor man himself. Also, DPD Bali report to the PNI National Chairman, May 29, 1965, No. 347/Sekr/DPD/ f65 . 47. Surachman, Laporan Tahunan DPP-PNI Kepada Sidang BPK-PNI di Lembang, November 15-18, 1964 (Mimeographed). 165 PKI also opposed retention of the economic, administrative and polit­ ical structures left behind by the Dutch. On this issue, for a while at least, the PNI saw the PKI as a useful tool against groups such as the PSI. In the early ’fifties, the Sidik leadership had maintained a parliamentary alliance with the PKI against the Masjumi and the PSI, but the party leadership had envisaged this as an alliance of con­ venience. As long as the PKI supported the PNI in pushing radical nationalist issues, "There is no need at this time, to consider the PKI an enemy."1*8 Given PKI weakness at the time, the PNI leadership believed it could use the PKI politically without much danger of being used in return. When the PKI won the 1957 provincial elections in Java, all the latent PNI hostility against it surfaced. Stung by the realization that PKI electoral gains had been made at the expense of the PNI, the party leadership in several provinces urged that PNI cooperation with the PKI at the capital be terminated. Though the Central Head­ quarters denied any change in policy, it, in fact, decided in August 1957 to withdraw Sidik’s September 1953 instruction on cultivating good relations with the PKI in local areas.1*9 In many places in Java, the PNI now actively sought alliances with the Masjumi and the NU against the PKI. In Djakarta politics, however, this was not possible--the Masjumi national leadership was discredited by its involvement in the PRRI rebellion, and Sukarno came increasingly to the defense of the PKI. At a time when politi­ cal parties were under attack and Sukarno’s power was increasing, the PNI could ill afford to displease him by openly attacking the Communists. This factor in PKI-PNI relations was especially evident during the so-called "Peristiwa Tiga Selatan" (Three Souths Affair) in 1960, when, contrary to the President’s wishes, the military commanders of South Sumatra, South Kalimantan, and South Sulawesi prohibited any PKI activities in their provinces. In both South Sumatra and South Kalimantan, the PNI provincial committees issued statements strongly supporting the ban.48950 Soon after, the Central Party Headquarters sent out an instruction to both provincial party committees ordering them to "neutralize" their statements of sup­ port and to leave the matter up to Central Headquarters. The letter said that the Central Headquarters " understood the reasons for their support of the ban," but urged them to ". . . look at the problem 48. "Pendjelasan Instruksi Rahasia," October 5, 1953. On September 8, Sidik had sent an instruction urging local branches to culti­ vate good relations with the PKI. When this secret instruction was leaked by the opposition press, Sidik sent the October 5 explanation. 49. "Keputusan Dewan Pimpinan Pusat," No. 15/Pol/1957, August 5, 1957. 50. "Pernjataan Dewan Daerah PNI Kalimantan Selatan," No. 1/DD-PNI/ ’60, August 24, 1960. In South Sumatra, the PNI provincial leadership sent a telegram to the local military commander, on August 29, supporting the ban. On September 2, it was forced into the embarrassing situation of having to withdraw this sup­ port. Press Release, DPD-PNI Sumatra Selatan (Mimeographed). 166 from a wider perspective. What we mean, among other things, is that we must ensure good relations between the Bapak Marhaenis [Sukarno] and the party leadership for the future good of our struggle.” 51 A subsequent letter said that the party should be neither for nor against the ban but should ’’profit from silence.”52 In the early ’fifties, the PNI-PKI relationship had worked largely in the PNI’s favor. The weakness and vulnerability of the PKI at that time made it easy even for staunch anti-Communists within the PNI to sanction a limited form of cooperation. The change in PNI leadership in 1956 and the disastrous PNI losses in the 1957 elections destroyed the basis of this relationship. The period from 1956 to 1960 was therefore characterized by sharp hostility between the two parties. The antagonism towards the PKI began to change in the early ’sixties under the impetus of Guided Democracy political arrange­ ments. In the new situation, the PNI had much to learn from the PKI. Ali Sastroamid jojo said in 1960: ’’The PNI should not have a Communist-phobia. We should admit that the PKI in fact has a considerable mass following. Our attitude should be one of com­ petition with them, especially in gaining the support of the masses.” 53 It was in the performance of these new tasks that the younger leadership of the PNI excelled, and they began to reorient the party ideologically and organizationally toward competition with the PKI. Party competition accelerated with the end of martial law in 1963, as the parties, after years of restricted activity, again de­ manded a voice in government affairs. Since government activity itself was rapidly expanding into more areas of social life through mass mobilization for the Irian and Confrontation campaigns, land reform, and the purchase and distribution of staples (such as fuel, sugar and rice), party rivalry expressed itself in these arenas too. Both parties played active roles in the welter of bodies set up to supervise these government programs and to direct campaigns against a variety of groups and organizations charged with being anti-regime. The PKI certainly outweighed the PNI in this competition. Its international connections put it in a better position to influence foreign policy as Sukarno moved closer to an alliance with Communist powers. Its more coherent ideology enabled it to identify and push political issues consistently, and it had a better command of the techniques of mass agitation. But Western commentators often as­ cribed more power and political prowess to the PKI than it deserved. It can, and has been argued,54 that as the PKI gained more and more 51. Letter from Central Headquarters to the South Kalimantan provincial committee, No. 029/Pol/004/’60, August 30 , 1960. 52. Letter from Central Headquarters to all provincial committees and the national leadership of the party ormas, No. 037/Pol/007/’60, September 1, 1960. 53. Risalah Badan Pekerdja Kongres PNI (Mimeographed, July 1960). 54. Donald Hindley, ’’President Sukarno and the Communists: The Politics of Domestication,” American Political Science Review, 56, no. 4 (December 1962), pp. 915-926. 167 legitimacy in the last years of Guided Democracy, it also began to lose some of its organizational and ideological dynamism. As more party members and sympathizers gained positions of power, they began to take on the qualities of bureaucratic conservatism. In order to defend its position in the capital, the PKI had to tone down the activism of its rural cadres. In having to adjust to the demands of Nasakom solidarity, it had to sacrifice some of the political cuttingedge of its ideology. The PNI