Suharto and His Generals
Indonesian Military Politics 1975-1983
David Jenkins
COfiHtLL IIIDONIHDOIUSU) PROJECTSuharto and His Generals
Indonesian Military Politics 1975-1983
David Jenkins
(Ml KIO&HN IHDONCIfl MM
Southeast Asia Program
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
1997
Third PrintingEditorial Board
Benedict Anderson
George Kahin
Stanley O’Connor
Keith Taylor
Oliver Wolters
Cornell Modem Indonesia Project
640 Stewart Avenue, Ithaca, NY 14850-3857
Cornell Modem Indonesia Project No. 64
© 1984 , Cornell Modern Indonesia Project. All rights reserved.
Published 1984. Third Printing 1997.
Except for brief quotations in a review, no part of this book may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the Cornell Modem Indonesia Project.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 0-87763-030-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Suharto and his generals : Indonesian military politics 1975 - 1983 / by David Jenkins. —
Monograph series (Cornell Modem Indonesia Project) ; publication no. 64.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87763-030-5 (pbk)
1. Indonesia — Politics and government - 1966- 2. Indonesia - Armed Forces — Political
activity- 3. Generals--Indonesia - Political activity- 4. Soeharto, 1921. I. Jenkins, David.
DS644.4 .J46 1984
85-148932 //r87For AnnCONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	vii
PREFACE	ix
INTRODUCTION: AN IDEOLOGY TAKES SHAPE	1
I:	ARMY OFFICERS AND KRATON POLITICS	13
II:	THE STRUCTURE OF ARMY DOMINANCE	33
III:	MOUNTING INTRAMILITARY TENSIONS	53
IV:	THE CALL FOR PURIFICATION: FOSKO
AND THE LKB	90
V:	ARMY PROPOSES, PALACE DISPOSES	113
VI:	BOTH SIDES AGAINST THE MIDDLE	134
VII:	THE STORM OVER PEKANBARU	157
VIII:	DISENCHANTMENT AND RETRIBUTION	174
IX:	THE HANKAM PAPER	188
X:	THE VIEWS OF GENERAL NASUTION	205
XI:	CRITICS AND CRITICISM ANALYSED	234
CONCLUSION	255
GLOSSARY	266
NAME INDEX	272
vTABLES
TABLE 1:	Overlapping Areas of Responsibility Within Suharto's Inner Circle (1978-80)	26
TABLE II:	Parallel Regional Bureaucracies and Their Interaction	46
TABLE III:	Susunan Pengurus "Forum Studi dan Komunikasi TNI" 1978	109
TABLE IV:	Golkar: The Structure and Dis- tribution of Power (as of 1978)	132
TABLE V:	ABRI Members Serving Outside Hankam	198
TABLE VI:	Retired Senior Officers Critical of Suharto's Government 1975-80	236
ILLUSTRATIONS
Following page 12
Inner Circle
1.	Lt. Gen. Ali Murtopo
2.	General Yoga Sugama
3.	Admiral Sudomo
4.	General Benny Murdani
Outer Circle
5.	General Maraden Panggabean
6.	General Widodo
7.	General Mohammad Jusuf
8.	General Sumitro
9.	Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono
10.	General Darjatmo
Fosko Croup
11.	General A. H. Nasution
12.	Lt. Gen. H. R. Dharsono
13.	Lt. Gen. Djatikusumo
14.	Lt. Gen. Ali Sadikin
15.	General Hugeng Imam Santoso
16.	Lt. Gen. Mohammad Jasin
17.	Lt. Gen. Mokoginta
18.	President Suharto
viACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This monograph has its origins in the four years I spent in In-
donesia in 1976-80 as a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic
Review but is based more particularly on research carried out under
a fourteen-month research grant at the Institute of Southeast Asian
Studies in Singapore in 1981-82.
The number of people to whom I am indebted for help and ad-
vice is, of course, enormous. But I would like to express my partic-
ular thanks to all those Indonesians, both civilian and military, who
took time out to explain, patiently and generously, something about
the workings of the Indonesian political and military systems.
By its very nature, much of the research work centered on
prominent retired officers who were critical of the way in which the
New Order had, they felt, failed to live up to the expectations of
1966. Here, I am particularly indebted to General A. H. Nasution,
who, despite his own heavy writing commitments, provided me with
many insights into the role of the armed forces in both the Old and
New Order periods. I also owe a very great debt to Brig. Gen. Ab-
dulkadir Besar, Lt. Gen. H. R. Dharsono, Lt. Gen. G. P. H. Djati-
kusumo, Genera, Hugeng Imam Santoso, Lt. Gen. Ibnu Sutowo, Lt.
Gen. Mohammad Jasin, Co,. Alex Kawilarang, the late Lt. Gen. A. J.
Mokoginta, Lt. Gen. Ali Sadikin, and the late Maj. Gen. Achmad
Sukendro. Other retired officers who provided invaluable insights
included Lt. Gen. T. B. Simatupang and Genera, Sumitro.
It would have been virtually impossible, however, to produce a
rounded account of the interna, debate over the military's role in so-
ciety without the help and understanding of those officers stil, in
power at the time this debate took place. Here, I owe a special debt
of gratitude to Admiral Sudomo, Genera, Benny Murdani, and General
Mohammad Jusuf. I am also indebted to Lt. Gen. Alamsjah Ratu Per-
wiranegara, Genera, Darjatmo, Maj. Gen. August Marpaung, Brig.
Gen. (Hon.) Nugroho Notosusanto, Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono, General
Supardjo Rustam, Genera, Widodo, and General Yoga Sugama. A
number of these senior officers expressed the view that a study of
this kind, if it were to have any value at all, should present the
picture "warts and all." If they fee, that in writing this account I
have included too many—or too few—warts, then I can only ask for
their further indulgence.
Many Indonesian civilians also provided invaluable insights and
background information, and in particular I would like to thank Rus-
lan Abdulgani, Sabam Siagian, Mohammad Natsir, Slamet Bratanata,
viiHarry Tjan Silalahi, and Jusuf Wanandi. I am also indebted to Toeti
Adhitama, Alex Alatas, Amir Daud, Gunawan Mohomad, Fikri Jufri,
the late Jusuf Ismail, Jusuf Ronodipuro, Aristides Katoppo, Lie Tek
Tjeng, Mochtar Lubis, Adam Malik, Onghokham, Buyung Nasution,
Subadio Sastrosatomo, Juwono Sudarsono, and Sudjatmoko.
Mention must also be made of Col. George Benson, a former
United States defense attach^ at the embassy in Jakarta and a man
who traces his links with many of Indonesia’s most senior military fig-
ures back to the days when they were captains and majors. He pro-
vided insights into the thinking of senior army officers over a quar-
ter of a century and on one occasion arranged an interview with an
officer not normally inclined to share his opinions with others. Col.
Joe Uttinger, likewise defense attach^ at the U.S. embassy for many
years, was also very generous in sharing his knowledge about the
Indonesian armed forces.
Perhaps my greatest debt is to Prof. Herbert Feith and Prof.
J. A. C. Mackie, who, when I was a very junior foreign correspon-
dent in Jakarta in 1969-70 for the Melbourne Herald, and later at
Monash University, opened my eyes to the study of Indonesian poli-
tics and generously shared their knowledge about the country. A
number of people have read or commented on one or more draft chap-
ters of the manuscript and offered many invaluable suggestions and
criticisms. Apart from Herb Feith and Jamie Mackie, the others in-
clude Brig. Gen. Abdulkadir Besar, Benedict Anderson, Slamet
Bratanata, Harold Crouch, Don Emmerson, Michael Leifer, General
Nasution, Brig. Gen. Nugroho Notosusanto, Sabam Siagian, Lt. Gen.
Simatupang, Leo Suryadinata, and Jusuf Wanandi. I am particularly
indebted to Don Emmerson for his very valuable comments on the ar-
rangement of the material in the opening chapters. Yuli Ismartono
and Fatmi Ronodipuro helped me find my way through some of the
more opaque writings on Indonesian military doctrine. Any errors or
omissions are, of course, my own responsibility.
Finally, I would like to thank Prof. Kernial Singh Sandhu of
the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies for his kindness in arranging
for me to spend fourteen months at the institute on a research grant,
with provision for three one-month visits to Indonesia. I am also
grateful to Derek Davies, the editor of the Far Eastern Economic Re-
view, who allowed me to take more than a year's leave of absence
from the magazine. Without this, the monograph could never have
been written.
viiiPREFACE
In writing this monograph I have been guided by two separate
but interrelated goals. The first has been to provide an histori-
cal-descriptive record of the ’’challenge” posed to President Suharto
within the Armed Forces of the Republic of Indonesia (ABRI) during
the period 1975-82 and the debate that developed over ABRI's role in
society. Although this debate sprawled across the whole canvas of
military involvement in society, it can be said to have focused essen-
tially on two key issues. The first, which was debated with consid-
erable vigor during the period 1977-80, involved ABRI's relations with
other social-political groups in society, and in particular the political
parties. The center of this debate was the "contradiction” between
ABRI's claim to be above all groups in society and the reality of its
continuing support for Golkar, the political grouping which held a
majority of the seats in the DPR (Parliament). Due largely to the in-
tervention of the president, this debate was resolved in favor of the
status quo and by 1980 it appeared unlikely that there would be any
substantial changes during the remainder of the Suharto presidency.
The second issue, which became of increasing importance after
1980, centered on the appointment of military officers to nonmilitary
functions. There were in the mid-1970s more than 20,000 military
men serving in a kekaryaan (nonmilitary, or "functional”) capacity,
as ministers, ambassadors, parliamentarians, senior executives in gov-
ernment corporations, bankers, senior civil servants, university rec-
tors, provincial governors, subdistrict heads, and even village head-
men. Answerable to the chief of staff for functional affairs (Kaskar),
they acted as "reinforcing rods” to ensure that the bureaucracy was
responsive to the commands of those at the top—a role that was not
unlike that of the Communist Party in many Communist states. In the
view of the critics, ABRI's heavy involvement in kekaryaan activities,
although understandable in terms of recent Indonesian history, was
excessive and needed to be scaled back. On this front, some gov-
ernment concessions seemed possible, if only because the armed forces
were short of manpower. Even so, any cutback in the kekaryaan
ABRI was likely to be both slow and from the bottom up, with the
commanding heights of the system remaining firmly in the hands of
the military leaders.
A related—but less central—thread that ran through the debate
was the need for "purification," this being a theme which found its
fullest expression in the statements of a number of prominent retired
officers, men who looked askance at what they saw as the moral dis-
solution of the times and who felt that widespread corruption was not
ixonly being tolerated but encouraged by the contemporary armed
forces’ leadership.
These challenges, although brushed aside with comparative ease
by the ruling group, raised fundamental questions about the sort of
society that was being created in Indonesia. What developed was, in
a sense, a debate between different factions within the outgoing Gen-
eration of '45, the officers who had fought in the independence
struggle against the Dutch, about the sort of values that should be
passed on to a new generation of military leaders, a competition for
their attention.
Criticisms of the government came from a whole pantheon of
former military leaders, including Nasution, R. Sudirman, Djatiku-
sumo, Dharsono, Sukendro, Mokoginta, Kawilarang, Jasin, Ali Sadi-
kin, and Hugeng. But it was much more than a campaign mounted by
retired officers, most of whom were depicted by the ruling group as
members of a socalled "Barisan Sakit Hati" (Sick at Heart Brigade).
Two of the key officers in the command structure—the 1978-83 minis-
ter of defense, General Mohammad Jusuf, and the 1978-80 army chief
of staff, General Widodo—were in sympathy with its aims, as were
members of the teaching staff at Seskoad, the Army Staff and Com-
mand School in Bandung, and members of Lemhannas, the National
Defense Institute, including Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono, the 1978-83
governor of that body.
On the other hand, it should not be supposed that this issue
divided the army down the middle to such an extent that it tran-
scended everything else. Most officers at the middle and lower
levels, although comprising the "audience" that each side was seeking
to reach, were "apolitical" in the sense that for one reason or another
they did not take sides. In the final analysis, the silent majority
could be expected to follow whatever dictates came down from on high
—at least for the time being. The debate took place very much at
the apex of the military pyramid and the sympathies of most of the
key figures there were well enough known, at least to those within
the system. Even at that level, however, there were officers who
managed to commit themselves to neither side.
This debate brought forth (and was in turn reflected in) a
series of papers which dealt at some length with the army's role in
society. The first such paper, produced by members of the teaching
staff at Seskoad, appeared in mid-1977, shortly after the general
elections. Reacting to the "excesses" of Golkar's 1977 election cam-
paign, the authors of the "Seskoad paper" urged that ABRI refrain in
the future from siding with one of the contestants in a general elec-
tion. Instead, they said, it should return to its "pure" role as a
body which was not the property of any one group in society but be-
longed to the nation as a whole. In the period that followed, papers
produced by Fosko, a "forum" for retired senior army officers, came
to broadly similar conclusions, as did papers produced by the Insti-
tute for the Promotion of Constitutional Awareness (LKB), an associa-
tion of "retired generals and retired politicians," which counted
xamongst its founders Dr. Mohammad Hatta, the former vice president,
as well as General Nasution, the former minister of defense.
The second major army paper—issued by the army chief of
staff, General Widodo, in October 1978—came to almost identical
conclusions. Indeed, the ’’Widodo paper” incorporated much of the
thinking that had been present in the earlier Seskoad document, as
well as materia, from Fosko and Lemhannas. But the Widodo paper
was much more than this. Prepared after Cose consultations with
senior army staff and command officers, it put forward an interpreta-
tion of the military’s dwifungsi (dual function) that appeared to be
starkly at odds with the thinking of the ruling Suharto group.
During the period from late 1978 until early 1980, Genera, Jusuf
was conducting a widely publicized campaign aimed at reunifying ABR,
and the people and stressing, as the Seskoad and Widodo papers had
done, that ABR, was not the property of any one group in society
but was above all groups, an assurance that gave hope to many that
the armed forces would not throw their weight behind Golkar in
future elections.
It wil, be argued in this paper that Suharto, aware of the
widening gap between the armed forces and society and knowing that
something had to be done about this, lent a degree of support to the
Jusuf campaign to "reunite” ABRI and the people and have it stand
above all groups in society. However, it wil, be suggested that
Suharto, who appeared to see the interests of ABR, and Golkar as in-
distinguishable and who had had himself elected chairman of the
Golkar "politburo" in October 1978, had no deep-seated commitment to
the notion of ABR, standing above all groups. Further, it wil, be
suggested that Suharto relied on Admiral Sudomo, one of the members
of his inner circle, to undermine much of the Jusuf campaign almost
from the start.
By 1981, it wil, be shown, the ruling group had reasserted it-
self and dealt with the various heresies that had been taking root.
Widodo, a favorite of neither Suharto nor Jusuf and a man whose per-
formance as chief of staff had come under criticism from other mem-
bers of the inner group, had been pushed into retirement and re-
placed by his deputy, Genera, Poniman, a bland and malleable com-
mand officer. Jusuf had had the rug pulled out from under him when
Suharto, addressing the RAPIM ABR, (Armed Forces Commanders
Call) in March 1980, had made it plain that ABR, would again support
Golkar and not stand above al, sociopolitical groups. Fosko had been
"frozen” and its members rebuked (and later penalized) for the criti-
cisms they had continued to launch. Nasution and other members of
the LKB who had signed a "Petition of Fifty" strongly critical of
Suharto had likewise been dealt with.
It only remained for the ruling group to formulate their own
counter to the Seskoad and Widodo papers. This they did when a
"Hankam paper"—Fighters and Soldiers: The Concept and Implementa-
tion of A BRI's Dual Function—was issued in 1981. Prepared by a
xiteam of trusted senior officials, the Hankam paper sought to provide
an ideological justification for the status quo and defend the way in
which the dwifungsi was being implemented.
The second goal has been to provide an analytical-speculative
conclusion that seeks to characterize the regime and estimate the fu-
ture role of the armed forces within it. This looks not just at the
twin themes of "elevation’1 (ABRI above all groups), which got no-
where, and at the limited military disengagement from ostensibly civil-
ian positions, which did get somewhere, and which, if only for
reasons of ABRI's self-interest, might well make further progress
during the remainder of the 1980s. It also looks at generational
change, the prospects for intramilitary conflict along generational
lines and at the wider subject of the character and future of Su-
harto’s military regime as a whole. Looked at in another way, the
manuscript is about two levels of conflict. One is about the identity
and role of the armed forces; the second is more basically about the
exercise of power. The aim has been to merge and separate the two
as judiciously as possible.
In considering these various issues, the study draws heavily on
two kinds of evidence: documentary (doctrinal) and recollected
(events). Basically, the latter is used to illustrate the former, and
vice versa. To limit oneself to the former would be to assume that
scripture and reality were synonymous, while to focus only on the
latter would be to dismiss the importance, however limited, of the
doctrinal debate in a welter of recollection and anecdotal material.1
In preparing the manuscript, I was fortunate in having been
provided by key participants in the debate with copies of all the
major papers that were prepared during the 1975-83 period on ABR,
doctrine and ideology. Even more fortunately, I was able to inter-
view, in most cases on tape, a broad cross-section of senior military
officers, both active and retired. To these men I owe an enormous
debt. Not only were they exceedingly generous with their time but
they spoke with remarkable candor—and with the benefit of first-hand
knowledge—about the key issues under discussion. What is more,
they were willing in all but a very few instances to have their views
attributed, a rare phenomenon when one is dealing with matters of
policy and planning that are often quite sensitive. As a result, it
has been possible to provide a sense of the personalities behind the
debate and to give an idea of which officers lined up on which sides
of certain key issues.
In an earlier paper,2 I made an attempt to trace the develop-
ment of Indonesia’s military doctrine over the years 1945-75 and to
show how the increasingly elaborate formulations of that doctrine in
1.	I am indebted to Don Emmerson for making this point.
2.	See David Jenkins, "The Evolution of Indonesian Army Doctrinal
Thinking: The concept of Dwifungsi," Southeast Asian Journaf of
Social Science, [Singapore], 11 , 2 (1983); 15-30.
xiithe years after 1957 were related to, and helped legitimize, the
army’s expanding role in political and economic affairs; a brief outline
of that process is set out in the Introduction, as is an outline of the
estrangement which has developed since independence between the
army and the forces of political Islam. Chapter One reviews some of
the literature on patrimonialism and praetorianism to orient the subject
matter of subsequent chapters, which is not the regime as a whole
but the particular role of the army within it. The chapter then de-
scribes the ’’core group” of senior officers around Suharto, their ide-
ology and outlook and the institutions over which they preside.
Chapter Two looks at the way in which Suharto has restructured the
political landscape in the years since 1966 and at the way in which he
has come to depend on the loyalty of the government administrative
structure—in particular the Departments of Defense and Home
Affairs—to implement his designs. The following four chapters trace
government attempts to ensure a satisfactory outcome during the 1977
general election; the initiatives for reform that were coming from var-
ious quarters, both inside ABRI and outside; the various bodies that
were created to give expression to this concern; the way in which
Golkar was brought still more firmly under the control of the presi-
dent during its 1978 national conference, and the way in which Jusuf
attempted to ensure that ABRI was at one with (manuggal) the
people.
Chapter Seven looks at Suharto’s decisive March 1980 speech at
Pekanbaru, in the course of which he ruled out suggestions that the
armed forces should in fact be above all groups in society and
stressed that ABRI should "choose friends” who truly supported
Pancasila, the five-point state ideology, and the 1945 Constitution.
The remaining chapters look at the Hankam paper, in which the rul-
ing group in effect put forth its own view of ABRI's role, at the
views of General Nasution, the founder of the dual function doctrine
and a prominent critic of Suharto and his system of government, and
at the other retired officers who clashed with the ruling military
leaders during this period. As indicated above, an attempt is made
to draw these threads together in the Conclusion and to look at
ABRI's likely future role in Indonesian society.
xiiiINTRODUCTION
AN IDEOLOGY TAKES SHAPE
In the first three decades after the proclamation of indepen-
dence in 1945, Indonesian military doctrine passed through five
fairly distinct periods. The first period, which spanned the years
of the physical revolution (1945-49), produced no shared military
doctrine. However, the experiences of army leaders during these
critical formative years gave birth to a strongly shared ethos, as
well as a range of arguments about the role that the armed forces
should play in society. Of central importance was the shared per-
ception that the Indonesian National Army (Tentara Nasional Indone-
sia, TNI) was created by the Indonesian people, not by civilian
political leaders. The notion that the army emerged from the
people, that it fought for independence alongside the populace
(even when the civilian political leaders had "surrendered"), and
that it had participated extensively in nominally "civilian" matters
during that time was to give birth to the idea that the armed forces
were justified in playing an extensive role in nonmilitary affairs.
During the second period—which coincided more or less with
the years of liberal democracy (1949-57)—these notions and ambi-
tions were, in the main, contained, as the Dutch-trained leadership
sought to rationalize and modernize a large, cumbersome, and im-
perfectly integrated army left over from the revolution. Occasion-
ally, however, military dissatisfaction with the civilian leadership
manifested itself in bids for greater power, most notably in the
"October 17 Affair" of 1952, a so-called "half coup" in which many
of the Dutch-trained officers were involved.
The third period—1957-59—stands in marked contrast to its
predecessor. With the outbreak of the regional rebellions and the
declaration of martial law (events which coincided with and marked
the death knell of libera,-style parliamentary democracy), military
leaders acquired enormous powers in the nonmilitary sector, powers
they were not at all loath to use in their quest both to "improve"
the working of the system and further their own political and eco-
nomic interests. In these two years, military leaders abandoned
any willingness to accept civilian ideas of the army being an apoliti-
cal instrument of the state and took their place alongside President
Sukarno as one of the two main pillars of the government, with
their b£te noire, the electoral,y popular Indonesian Communist Party
(PKI), just outside the government. This dramatic enhancement of
the army's influence in society was legitimized first by martial law
12
and then by General Nasution's doctrines of the dual function (dwi-
fungsi).
On November 11 , 1958, three years after he had been reap-
pointed army chief of staff, Nasution delivered his most important
speech on the position of the TNI in society. Speaking without
notes at a graduation ceremony at the military academy at Magelang,
the chief of staff said that the position of the TN, was not like that
of an army in a Western country, in which the military was solely
an "instrument of the government." Neither was it like that of
various Latin American armies which monopolized political power.
Rather, the TNI was one of the forces of the people's struggle
which was at the same level and which fought shoulder to shoulder
with other forces, such as parties.1 The army itself would not be
politically active, yet neither would it be simply a spectator. Indi-
vidual officers must be granted an opportunity to participate in the
government and to make use of their nonmilitary skills in helping
develop the nation. Officers must be permitted to participate in
determining economic, financial, international, and other policies at
the highest levels of government. Therefore they must have a
place in all the institutions of the state, not just in the National
Council and the cabinet, as was already the case, but also in the
National Planning Council, the diplomatic corps, Parliament, and
elsewhere in the government. If this did not happen, Nasution
warned, the army might react violently to discrimination against its
officers.
Nasution's concern at this time, Lev has argued, was to en-
sure that the military continued to exercise an influence in decision
making, if only to keep the political parties, and in particular the
increasingly powerful PKI, at bay.2 The difficulty, however, was
that martial law was temporary and under attack. To make perma-
nent the army's right to participate in the direction of national af-
fairs, says Lev, Nasution claimed for it a new and explicitly politi-
cal status.
In the fourth period between 1959 and 1965, military leaders
extended and defended their position in the nonmilitary sector,
their doctrines (increasingly formulated by Brig. Gen. Suwarto, the
head of Seskoad, the Army Staff and Command School in Bandung),
being used to legitimize what was now known as "the army's middle
way,"3 and ensure the continuation of a military role in society;
these efforts were motivated, in part at least, by the army's impla-
1.	Because this speech was made without a text, the only record
of it is in contemporary newspaper reports.
2.	Daniel S. Lev, "The Political Role of the Army in Indonesia,"
Pacific Affairs 36 (Winter 1963-1964), 349-64.
3.	It was Prof. Djokosutono, not Nasution, who dubbed the con-
cept "the army's middle way" (jalan tengah tentara).3
cable opposition to the PKI, which, in the years 1962—65, formed
the third corner of the Sukarno-army-PKI "triangle.”
In mid-1962 Sukarno was able to outmanoeuver Nasution and
replace him as army chief of staff with General Achmad Yani, a
Javanese officer who, though he shared the dominant army concern
about the PKI, was more inclined to defer to Sukarno’s leadership.
Yani pledged to unite himself {menyatukan diri) "with the leader-
ship of Bung Karno," and within a short time had secured the re-
moval of a number of regional commanders who had opposed the
president, particularly on Communist issues. As the influence of
the palace grew, the pro-Sukarnoist views of certain key officers
became increasingly apparent. Thus in 1964, the Siliwangi com-
mander, Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Adjie, had the phrase "Bung Karno is
my leader" {Bung Karno adalah pemimpinku) written into the "Ca-
turlaksana" (Four Guides for Implementation) of the Siliwangi.4 * * * * * * 11
Seen from outside, Sukarnoist influence in the army reached
its zenith during the first army seminar, organized by Yani in April
1965. The new military doctrine produced by this gathering—the
Tri Ubaya Cakti, or Three Sacred Vows—was so heavily laced with
Sukarnoist imagery and ideology that it was to be subjected to a
"total correction" at a second seminar held fifteen months later, fol-
lowing Sukarno's decline. At the same time, the seminar formally
adopted the concept of the dual function, affirming that the armed
forces had a dual role as both a "military force" and a "social-
political force." As a social-political force, the army's activities
covered "the ideological, political, social, economic, cultural, and
religious fields."
In the aftermath of the pro-Communist coup attempt of Sep-
tember 30, 1965, in which Yani and five other senior officers were
killed, leadership of the army was assumed by Maj. Gen. Suharto,
the commander of Kostrad, the army strategic reserve. The ruth-
less purge of the PKI, which was accused of having masterminded
the coup, eliminated the party as an effective political force during
4. Interview with General A. H. Nasution, August 9, 1983. Adjie
was not so much a pro-Sukarnoist in the ideological sense but felt a
strong personal loyalty to the president. Adjie had gone in the
face of Nasution's strict moral code when he had divorced his first
wife. He had compounded the offense by returning from Yugosla-
via, where he served as military attach^, with a second, Yugoslav
wife. Nasution's indignation was such that he refused to reassign
Adjie for more than seven months and may even have intended to
edge him out of the service. Sukarno stepped in, however, and
forced Nasution to appoint Adjie chief of staff of the Siliwangi,
leaving Adjie, who moved up to become panglima ten months later,
with a personal debt to the president. See Ulf Sundhaussen, The
Road to Power, Indonesian Military Politics 1945-1967 (Kuala
Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 150-51. Adjie was
also close to Hartini, Sukarno's third wife.4
the closing months of 1965. In many areas army officers cooperated
with anti-Communist civilian groups in a massacre that claimed the
lives of anywhere between 200,000 and 300,000 party activists.
Half a million more were arrested. This left Sukarno, whom some
army leaders suspected of complicity in the death of the generals,
in a greatly weakened position vis-S-vis the army and culminated in
his ouster in March 1967. The former balance of forces irreparably
shattered, the army now stood as the dominant actor on the political
stage with Suharto moving quickly to consolidate his power. Within
a month of the coup Suharto had succeeded in filling virtually all
key positions in the army general staff with his own appointees and
had begun the process of excluding Nasution from the center of de-
cision making. During 1966 he launched a thoroughgoing purge of
pro-PKI and pro-Sukarno elements in the army, particularly in East
and Central Java. Thousands of officers and men were arrested,
suspended, transferred, or dishonorably discharged.
In these circumstances, senior officers moved to reformulate
military doctrine. This involved stripping away the "excesses” of
the "Old Order" period and putting together a creed that would
provide the doctrinal basis for a "New Order" government. When a
second army seminar was held in Bandung in August 1966, the
notion that the army had a dual role was developed still further;
the army not only had a right and duty to assume responsibilities
outside the military field, the seminar declared, but had been
"forced" into expanding its nonmilitary activities. "All the people's
hopes for well being are focused on the armed forces in general and
the army in particular," the seminar declared. Therefore, the army
had no choice but to live up to the expectations of the people,
which entailed securing the formation of a responsible, strong, and
progressive government.5
The holding of such a seminar was timely. As Harold May-
nard has observed, military men were daily undertaking new and
expanded functions, yet no consensus had been reached on their
role. A military program was required which would receive the
widespread support of army leaders.
The conclusions reached at the army seminar in Bandung were
disseminated to the armed forces as a whole at a defense and se-
curity seminar in November, one which was attended by senior offi-
cers of al, four services—the army, navy, air force, and police.
This meeting produced a Doctrine of National Defense and Security
and a Doctrine for the Struggle of the Armed Forces of the Repub-
lic of Indonesia. Subtitled Four Missions, One Fate (Catur Dharma
Eka Karma), the document stressed the fact that the four services
5. Doktrin Perjuangan TNI-AD "Tri Ubaya Cakti," quoted in Ulf
Sundhaussen, "The Military: Structure, Procedures, and Effects on
Indonesian Society," in Political Power and Communications in Indo-
nesia, ed. Karl D. Jackson and Lucian V/. Pye (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1978), p. 69.5
were joined by one doctrine. Maynard argues that this 121-page
document was most notable for the fact that it expanded and solidi-
fied the concept of dwifungsi.6
The principal statement of New Order military doctrine, the
document begins by stressing the familiar theme that the armed
forces were born of the people's struggle during the revolution.
Those forces, it emphasizes, have always remained loyal to the pre-
cepts of the Pancasila. Depicting the armed forces in centrist
terms, the document says that military units have been employed in
what amounts to a continuous struggle against elements of the ex-
treme left (the 1948 Madiun revolt and the 1965 coup attempt) and
the extreme right (the Darul Islam and the PRRI-Permesta regional
rebellion of 1957-61 ).
In this fifth period—from 1965—one can distinguish, as dur-
ing Guided Democracy, between an initial phase (1966-67), in which
the key doctrines were established, and a later one in which they
were maintained and in some ways modified. At the second army
seminar in 1966 the New Order leaders were conscious not only of
the need to "perfect" the Tri Ubaya Cakti doctrine and rid it of its
Sukarnoist and leftist embellishments but to develop a comprehen-
sive doctrinal statement, justifying and rationalizing the military's
dominant influence in society. (By 1983, further refinement seemed
likely, there being a growing feeling in military circles that the
Catur Dharma Eka Karma doctrine, though still reflecting the basic
philosophy of the armed forces, needed to be amended to take into
account the structural changes that had been made in 1969 and
thereafter. At the same time, there was a feeling that it would be
appropriate to discard certain words that were carryovers from the
Old Order lexicon—"revolution" was a case in point—and no longer
quite in keeping with ABRI's outlook.)
For at least two decades, the notion that ABRI has a legiti-
mate role to play as a "social-political force" has been enshrined in
every important publication dealing with military doctrine and has
gained considerable acceptance in society at large. However, the
acceptable parameters of armed forces' intervention in society have
always been controversial.
Not even with the physical elimination of the PKI in 1965-66
and the subsequent eclipse of Sukarno were many key army leaders
inclined to give much thought to the notion that military officers
wielded "too much" power. The instability generated by the col-
lapse of the old triangular relationship convinced army leaders that
they were justified in playing a still more dominant role "to help fill
the vacuum and restore order." This view found a good deal of
initial acceptance amongst those groups in society who accepted
6. See Harold Ward Maynard, "A Comparison of Military Elite Role
Perceptions in Indonesia and the Philippines" (Ph.D. thesis, The
American University, 1976), p. 154.6
membership in the army-led New Order "partnership." By the mid-
1970s, however, the situation had changed. Stability had been re-
stored and the groundwork undertaken to prepare the nation for
"twenty-five years of accelerated modernization." Yet it appeared
that the army—or, more particularly, the dominant group around
President Suharto—envisaged no significant reduction in military in-
fluence. The government view seemed to be that the situation had
to remain much as it was to ensure that the hard-won stability was
not overturned. This development—along with other alleged short-
comings of New Order rule—disturbed a number of Indonesians,
civilian and military alike, their concern manifesting itself in vari-
ous ways. The ranks of those critical of the government included
Nasution, now retired, and a number of likeminded officers who felt
that Suharto and his group had overstated the role of the military,
to the clear detriment of civilian institutions.
*****
These attempts to forge a coherent military doctrine took
place at a time of growing estrangement between the army and the
forces of political Islam, an estrangement which was a more-or-less
permanent backdrop to Indonesian politics during the years 1975-82.
The differences between the army and political Islam have their
roots in the basic cleavage that exists between the two cultural ori-
entations of Java, that between the sontri, the devoutly Muslim
minority, and the abangan, those who, while nominally Muslim, are
more attuned to a philosophy and culture that dates from Java's
pre-lslamic past. These differences, which were sharpened during
the revolution by a clash between regular army units and irregular
guerrilla forces oriented to Muslim political groups, have invariably
focused on the place of religion in the state.
During the thirties, nationalist leaders had debated this ques-
tion in a series of lively polemical exchanges, their deliberations
being marked by a surprising degree of intellectual tolerance and
mutual respect. With the approach of independence in 1945, how-
ever, the place of Islam became the subject of an intense and in-
creasingly acrimonious debate, particularly in the BPKI, the Body
to Investigate Measures for the Preparation of Indonesian Indepen-
dence, an organization dominated by those of a secular nationalist
cast of mind.
In his study of the Indonesian national revolution, Anthony
Reid has noted that Muslim representatives had "always argued the
need for a Muslim state in which religious law would be enforce-
able."7 Sukarno's position, which had been outlined in his famous
Pancasila speech of June 1,	1945, was that the state should be
based on "belief in the One, Supreme God," whether worshipped in
7. Anthony J. S. Reid, Indonesian National Revolution: 1945-1950
(Melbourne: Longman, 1974), p. 20.7
Muslim or Christian terms. If the Muslims wanted more than this,
Sukarno held, they were free to strive for it through the demo-
cratic process. The Muslims were offended that Sukarno had
treated Islam as merely one religion among many, and they sought,
in subsequent subcommittee meetings of the BPKI, to strengthen the
position of Islam. In this they met with some success. The sub-
committee's draft preamble to the Constitution, which came to be
known as the Jakarta Charter, provided in one centrally important
passage that Indonesia would be a republic founded not only on the
basis of unity, a righteous and civilized humanity, democracy, and
social justice, but also on belief in God "with the obligation for
those who profess the Islamic faith to abide by Islamic laws," seven
words (in the original Indonesian version) which gave rise to a
constitutional controversy that continues to this day. In July 1945,
the BPKI made the further concession that the president should be
a Muslim. "Although well short of Muslim hopes," Reid notes, "this
was to prove the highest point in their pursuit of an Islamic
state."8 By August, the "seven words" had been dropped from the
preamble (as had the reference in the Constitution to the fact that
the president should be a Muslim), largely, it appears, because Dr.
Hatta accepted Christian arguments that a phrase that referred to
only one religion was discriminatory.9 In its final form, the pre-
amble to the Constitution was a Sukarno-inspired compromise be-
tween two key groups—the nationalists, who sought to build a sec-
ular state, and the Islamic group, which wished to build an Islamic
state. The compromise enshrined in that document was that there
should be a state that was neither secular nor Islamic. Rather,
there would be a state which was built on "belief in the One, Su-
preme Cod," a concept sufficiently general to cover all religions.
8.	Ibid.
9.	On August 17, 1945, after the proclamation of independence,
Hatta received a Japanese naval officer who came as an envoy of
the Kaigun (Japanese navy). The officer said that representatives
of the Protestant and Catholic communities of Eastern Indonesia, an
area under Kaigun administration, were "very disturbed" at the in-
clusion of the seven words in the preamble. They felt, the officer
said, that "the inclusion of such a requirement in such a vital part
of the Constitution implied a form of discrimination against minori-
ties." If such "discrimination" was to be retained, they felt they
would be better off outside the Republic of Indonesia. Though he
argued that there was no discrimination in the Jakarta Charter,
Hatta decided it would be wise to remove the sentence in order to
prevent "splitting" the new nation. The next day the BPKI unani-
mously approved the change. See Mohammad Hatta, Indonesian
Patriot: Memoirs, ed. C. L. M. Penders (Singapore: Gunung
Agung, 1981), pp. 240-43. According to a source closely connected
with these events, the Japanese approach to Hatta was almost cer-
tainly made at the behest of Dr. Sam Ratulangi, an astute Christian
politician from Menado, North Sulawesi. Confidential communication.8
Against this backdrop of santri-abangan relations and the de-
bate over the most appropriate form of the soon-to-be proclaimed
state, there developed a cleavage between regular army units, most
of them made up of former officers and men of the Peta, the Japa-
nese-sponsored self-defense force, and irregular lasykar units,
many of them associated with Islamic political parties. The seeds of
this conflict were sown in 1944 when the Hizbullah (Army of Allah)
was set up on Java as an Islamic paramilitary group independent of
the Peta. This established the principle of a separate Muslim mili-
tary organization, and in the period thereafter "youth from the
pious Muslim (santri) community was channelled separately into the
revolution.1,10 Acting in league with the Islamic parties, says
McVey, the Hizbullah "thus entered on the anti-army side into the
rivalry between the regular and the irregular forces."* 11 When in
early 1948 the Siliwangi division of the regular army withdrew from
West Java in accordance with the Renville Agreement with the
Dutch,	Hizbullah	units	remained to	carry	on	a guerrilla war. In
March	1948 the	group	established	itself	as	the Darul Islam, an
autonomous organization with its own army, the Islamic Army of In-
donesia	(Tentara	Islam	Indonesia,	Til).	In	August, its leader,
S. M.	Kartosuwirjo, proclaimed the	Islamic	State of Indonesia (Ne-
gara Islam Indonesia), organized on what he took to be Koranic
lines.12 This development triggered off a religious revolt that was
to last thirteen years, exacerbating the tensions between orthodox
Muslims and army leaders. As McVey has noted,
The long years of warfare against Muslim rebellion en-
couraged a tradition of army distrust of militant Islam,
and the many Javanese officers of abangan persuasion
were strengthened in their objection to Muslim aggres-
siveness. As a result of all this, the secularizing ten-
dency common to the modern professional military was.
10.	Ruth McVey, "The Post-Revolutionary Transformation of the In-
donesian Army (Part I)," Indonesia 11 (April 1971 ): 138.
Islam had been treated with suspicion by the Dutch colonial authori-
ties. However, the Japanese actively encouraged Islamic groups
and during their occupation of the East Indies young Indonesian
Muslims were brought into the civil service in increasing numbers.
A number of these young men later found themselves in military
service, not always in the Hizbullah. Among those who joined the
Peta were Sudirman, Muljadi Djojomartono, and Kasman Singodi-
medjo, all of whom were members of the Muhammadiyah, the modern-
ist Islamic social and educational organization.
11.	Ibid.
12.	See Herbert Feith, The Decline of Constitutional Democracy/ in
Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962), p. 54, and
Reid, Indonesian National Revolution, p. 158.9
in the Indonesian case, particularly marked; the santri
officer became a rare bird . . .13
Less than one year after the Dutch transfer of sovereignty in
1949, an important confrontation took place in Jakarta between the
leaders of the army on the one hand and the leaders of the Mas-
yumi, at that time the major Muslim political party in Indonesia, on
the other. The prime minister, Mohammad Natsir, was a leading
member of the Masyumi, and senior army officers, who were at the
time engaged in operations against the Darul Islam, professed to be
anxious to know where the Masyumi stood on the rebellion. With
the support of his fellow officers, the armed forces chief of staff,
Col. T. B. Simatupang, a Christian who was later to become chair-
man of the Indonesian Council of Churches, approached Natsir and
asked if the Masyumi could issue a statement condemning the Darul
Islam. Natsir sidestepped the issue by pointing out that he was no
longer chairman of the party, referring Simatupang instead to Jusuf
Wibisono, the acting chairman of the organization. At the end of
an almost day-long session with the armed forces' representative,
Wibisono and his fellow Masyumi leaders said that the maximum their
party could say on the matter of the Negara Islam was that the
Masyumi had its own way. According to Simatupang, the armed
forces' leadership took this to mean that the Masyumi favored the
idea of a Negara Islam but that they had their own way of achiev-
ing this; that is, they would seek to do so democratically and con-
stitutionally. 14
The notion of a "Negara Islam," says Simatupang, found its
way into the language of Indonesian politics because of the Darul
Islam, and became linked with political Islam as a whole because the
Masyumi leaders had felt they could not be seen to be "underbid-
ding" the Daru, Islam. This had been a tragedy for Indonesia and
a tragedy for Islam in Indonesia. Until then, the army and Islamic
groups had been able to work essentially for the same goals. Now,
the army feared that the whole question of the shape of the state
was being reopened. Partly as a result of this, the army had
13.	McVey, "Post-Revolutionary Transformation," p. 139. In this
context, it may be worth noting that when the three big Java divi-
sions—the Siliwangi, Diponegoro, and Brawijaya—were formed, the
military leadership showed a distinct preference for pre-lslamic
names. Siliwangi was the last great pre-lslamic king of West Java,
Brawijaya the last non-lslamic emperor of East Java. And while
Prince Diponegoro was a Muslim, he was honored more for his na-
tionalist, than his Islamic credentials. In the opinion of some, the
heroes of the pre-lslamic past have a special link in the minds of
the military leadership with nationalist aspirations, their names more
evocative, more suited to efforts to mobilize the spirit of the na-
tion.
14.	Interviews with Lt. Gen. Simatupang, July 8 and 10, 1982.10
taken steps to introduce the Sapta Marga, the oath of loyalty, with
its uncompromising declaration that the army was committed to up-
hold the Pancasila (and, by extension, reject any attempt to set up
an Islamic state).
Islam remained the great political issue of the fifties and Mus-
lim politicians worked tirelessly to advance their cause, their set-
back at the 1955 general elections (when the combined Islamic vote
accounted for only 44 percent of the total) notwithstanding. In
1959, as Indonesia moved towards the readoption of the 1945 Consti-
tution (it had been dropped two months after its introduction), the
Islamic political groupings tried once again to have "the seven
words" written back into the preamble of that document. The at-
tempt proved unsuccessful, meeting with the combined opposition of
President Sukarno, the Indonesian National Party (Partai Nasional
Indonesia, PNI), the PKI, the Christian parties, and, ultimately,
the army. However, the decree announcing the return to the 1945
Constitution was couched in language that was deliberately ambiva-
lent. "Considering that the Jakarta Charter influences/influenced
the Constitution," it said, that Constitution was again valid. In
Bahasa Indonesia there are no verba, roots inflected for tenses and
the sentence can be read either as a statement of historical fact or
as an acknowledgment that the Jakarta Charter has a continuing in-
fluence on the Constitution.15
In the opinion of the current ruling group—and in the opin-
ion of Christian leaders like Simatupang—talk of the Pancasila plus
the Jakarta Charter is totally unacceptable. Such a cal, is not only
discriminatory, it is argued, but opens up a Pandora’s box of deli-
cate questions: Once it is said in the Constitution that Muslims must
abide by the syariah (Islamic law), the argument runs, the state is
given power to enforce the syariah. As a result, the state must
then make up its mind just what the syariah encompasses, with al,
the problems that entails. In short, it is argued, any such move
would alter the whole nature of the state.
In these circumstances, some Indonesians contend, it is up to
wise and thoughtful Muslim leaders to take the initiative and con-
vince the army leadership that Islamic groups have abandoned their
dreams of an Islamic state. The army, this argument runs, is
aware that many Muslims speak disparagingly about the Pancasila
and that some among them are arguing that only through acts of
force and even violence can Islam gain its rightful place in the
scheme of things. In view of this, it is said, it is understandable
that the army leadership will go on suspecting the Islamic group.
To others there are drawbacks to this line of reasoning,
drawbacks that go well beyond the fact that it is difficult, given
15. The view that the Jakarta Charter still applies owing to the
confusion in the 1959 wording is found, for example, in Saifuddin
Anshari, The Jakarta Charter of June 1945 (Kuala Lumpur: Muslim
Youth Movement of Malaysia, 1979), especially pp. 104-5.11
the way the army has structured the situation, for any strong and
self-confident Islamic leadership to emerge. In this view, the bur-
den of proof is being put on the Islamic community to show that it
is not against the Pancasila when in fact this is no longer an issue
of any importance. Since 1945 according to this argument, having
Islamic aspirations has not meant that one doubts the Pancasila, a
point that both Sukarno and Hatta had explained clearly on many
occasions. What is needed, it is argued, is a government which is
sufficiently enlightened and sufficiently self-confident to come to
terms with the question of political Islam, not a government that
treats it as something dark and malevolent. "There is no question
Islam is in crisis," an Indonesian scholar noted in 1978.
Islam has just begun to come to grips with the modern
world and the essentially secular aspect of the political
process and Islam will be a problem for a long time.
But one doesn't deal with the problem by throwing all
the Muslims onto one heap and dealing with them.
There is a fundamental identity with Islam in Indonesia,
even with the abangan. People wouldn't vote for a
party which had an important element of Christians in
it.16
There were, as we have seen, understandable reasons why
the army was wary of political Islam. The Darul Islam and the
PRRI-Permesta had caused enormous dislocations, and suppression
of the Darul Islam in particular had cost the army dearly in terms
of loss of life. The PRRI-Permesta rebellion, however, had not
been entirely a Muslim affair and not all Muslims had sided with it.
(Many of the most prominent PRRI military leaders were Christians,
including Warouw, Simbolon, Kawilarang, and Sumual). And though
the Daru, Islam leaders had sought to create an Islamic state, few
in the mid-1970s were still thought to nurture that dream.
The army, however, had taken this basic fear of Islam—a
fear which struck a responsive chord in its own breast—and had,
many believed, played upon it for its own political ends. The fear,
it was suggested, had been greatly exaggerated. And that, in
turn, had led the government to ignore the great changes that were
taking place amongst Muslims. Many of the younger Muslim intellec-
tuals had left the idea of an Islamic state behind them. There was
still, it was true, a fundamentalist fringe in Indonesia. But it was
no more than this. Even so, as one scholar notes
it is a fact that there is enough combustible material in
our society to keep alive the fear of Islam. What kept
Sukarno in power so long? It was the fact that the
16. For my understanding of the role of Islam in Indonesia politics
I am particularly indebted to a prominent Indonesian scholar who
wishes to remain anonymous.12
abangan, the Catholics and the Protestants were more
afraid of Islam than of the Communists. The same
groups support the army and I think that fear is being
manipulated for power reasons. Many seriously fear it
[Islam] but a leadership that would know how to handle
the Muslims and had closer cooperation with them would
be able to reduce the fear to more manageable propor-
tions. 17
What made matters worse was that there had been a backlash
against the greed and materialism associated with development.
This was a moral backlash which, given the transitional nature of
the society, had assumed religious overtones. Muslims, disturbed
by what they saw around them, had tended to become even more
Muslim. There was, essentially, a yearning for moral rectitude in
the face of morally reprehensible behavior, and its impact had al-
ready been felt in Iran, in Pakistan, in Bangladesh to some extent,
and in Malaysia. "We are really involved in great historical pro-
cesses which we very rarely see let alone understand but which are
of great importance in the Third World," this scholar noted. "In a
way, it might make Indonesia more difficult to govern. It is not
just a matter of how is the government doing, how is the military
doing. Over and above that there are processes going on which we
only dimly perceive and even less understand. This only highlights
the government's fear of Islam."18
As the Muslim world went through these convulsions, the
army view of Islam remained static. The army liked to see itself as
centrist in outlook, a group, neither of the right nor the left,
which had been called on repeatedly to save the nation from ex-
tremism of one kind or another. Pancasila, Liddle has noted, is
currently interpreted in centrist terms, "containing all the
strengths and none of the weaknesses of left or right, and Dwi
Fungsi is the guarantee that Indonesia will remain a Panca Sila
state.1,19
17.	Confidential communication.
18.	Ibid.
19.	R. W. Liddle, "The 1977 Indonesian Election and New Order
Legitimacy," Southeast Asian Affairs (1978), p. 123.1. Lt. Gen. Ali Murtopo (reprinted	2. General Yoga Sugama
by permission of Tempo)
3. Admiral Sudomo (reprinted	4. General Benny Murdani
by permission of Tempo)
Inner Circle5. General Maraden Panggabean
6. General Widodo	7. General Mohammad Jusuf
Outer8. General Sumitro
9. Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono (reprinted	10. General Darjatmo
by permission of Tempo)
Circle11. General A. H. Nasution
12. Lt. Gen. H. R. Dharsono (reprinted
by permission of Tempo)
13. Lt. Gen. Djatikusumo (reprinted
by permission of Tempo)
Fosko14. Lt. Gen. Ali Sadikin
15. General Hugeng Imam Santoso
(reprinted by permission of Tempo)
Group18. President SuhartoCHAPTER ONE
ARMY OFFICERS AND KRATON POLITICS
After Malari Pak Harto asked me. . . . ‘Well, what do
you think about the idea of Ali [Murtopo] becoming Chief
of Bakin?’ 'No'! I rejected it. I told Pak Harto, 'It is
not because I don't like Ali, Pak! It is because we have
to create a very good impression with the whole intelli-
gence effort'. Intelligence officers should not play games
in the political processes.
— General Sumitro, 19811
For anyone studying the Indonesian political scene in the early
1980s, the most obvious phenomenon was the preeminent position of
President Suharto, a retired army officer whose political skills were
still sometimes underestimated. Suharto's bland, almost avuncular,
manner concealed astuteness and craft, and the personal graciousness
he exhibited to guests disguised strongly held—and surprisingly
rigid—views about the sort of society he was seeking to build. Su-
harto had spent the years since 1965 extending and defending his
power base and he was now very much more than the primus inter
pares in a collegial army leadership. Suharto stood at the apex of
the pyramid; his appointees sat in each of the key executive, legisla-
tive, and judicial branches of government. He dominated the cabinet
and the state bureaucracy. He dominated the armed forces (Angkatan
Bersenjata Republic Indonesia, ABRI) and had hand-picked both the
minister of defense and the commander of Kopkamtib, the powerful
Operational Command for the Restoration of Security and Order. He
dominated the People's Consultative Assembly (Majelis Permusya-
waratan Rakyat, MPR)—the body that continued to reelect him for
successive five-year terms—and had selected a trusted military col-
league to preside over its deliberations. He was the central figure in
Colkar, the army-backed political movement, and had crippled the ef-
fectiveness of the two "opposition" political parties. He dominated the
judicial branch, weak as it was, and had stacked its key positions
with long-time associates, all of them generals. He appointed the men
who sat in the Supreme Advisory Council (Dewan Pertimbangan
Agung, DPA). His writ extended into every department and into
every state-run corporation; it reached down, if he chose, to every
village. He wielded enormous power both because the 1945 Constitu-
1. Interview with General Sumitro, March 17, 1981.
1314
tion confers enormous power on the president and because he was the
dominant influence over the army, itself the dominant force in so-
ciety. In short, he had established himself as the paramount figure
in a society in which deference to authority is deeply rooted.
This power, however, needs to be seen in context. Though
Suharto had an extraordinary capacity to influence the course of
events in Indonesia, his power was by no means unlimited. In a dis-
cussion of the constitutional deliberations of 1945, John Legge has
made the point that, while the outlines of the 1945 Constitution
appear to provide for an almost dictatorial president, "the wide dis-
persion of power in Indonesia was likely to tell against any heavy-
handed exercise of authority. Any president would, in practice,
have to conciliate pressure groups."2 This has, in fact, been the
case, for Suharto no less than it was for Sukarno. In formal terms,
Suharto’s influence over society seems almost unfettered. In prac-
tice, Suharto has been obliged on most issues to be a consensus
seeker, meeting endlessly with the leaders of major social and political
groups, bending them, where possible, to his will. In this sense, he
has been almost as "political" as his predecessor, the army’s pro-
claimed disdain for politics notwithstanding.
Patrimonial or a Praetorian State?
Many observers have commented on the fact that the system of
government in contemporary Indonesia bears a marked resemblance to
that which was found in precolonial Java, a line of argument which
finds its most elegant formulation in Benedict Anderson's 1972 essay
on "The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture."3 4
Perhaps the most exact image of the ordered Javanese polity,
Anderson suggested in that essay, "is that of a cone of light cast
downwards by a reflector lamp."*1 Traditional Javanese thought im-
plicitly denied a hierarchical approach, "since a hierarchy presup-
poses a certain degree of autonomy at each of its various levels"; in-
stead, it sought ideally a single, pervasive source of power and
authority, the core of the traditional polity being the ruler, who per-
sonified the unity of society.5 Turning to the traditional relationship
between the ruler and the governmental structure through which he
ruled, Anderson noted that Schrieke’s picture of the administrative
2.	See J. D. Legge, Sukarno: A Political Biography (New York:
Praeger, 1972), pp. 189-90.
3.	See Benedict R. O’G. Anderson, "The Idea of Power in Javanese
Culture" in Culture and Politics in Indonesia, ed. Claire Holt et al.
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), pp. 1-69. Anderson, it
should be said, has now largely abandoned this view.
4.	Ibid., p. 22.
5.	Ibid.15
structure of the precolonial Javanese kingdom admirably fits Max
Weber’s model of the patrimonial state. According to this model, the
centra, government is essentially an extension of the ruler’s persona,
household and staff. Officials are granted their positions and the
perquisites that go with them as personal favors of the ruler and may
be dismissed or degraded at his persona, whim. ’’The administrative
structure, while formally hierarchical, is in effect composed of strati-
fied clusters of patron-client relationships," Anderson noted. "Both
in the regions and in the center, officials gather around them clus-
ters of persona, dependents, on the mode, of the ruler himself," the
destinies of these dependents being linked with the success or failure
of their patrons.
What one sees here, said Anderson, is the marked consonance
of the traditional Javanese concept of Power with the political struc-
tures and behavior of the patrimonial state. Moreover, he suggested,
the "indigenization" of bureaucratic structures and behavior in Indo-
nesia that was so marked after the middle 1950s "can be usefully
viewed as a reemergence of the patrimonial mode,."6 And while the
major cause of this reemergent patrimonialism was doubtless the fact
that the rational-legal bureaucracy of Dutch times proved economically
unsustainable in a period of economic decline "the holding power of
patrimonialism was probably also accentuated by the persistence of
traditional perspectives so consonant with it."7 In Anderson's view,
the signal unwillingness of the pusat (center) to accede to demands
for decentralization and regional autonomy in the late parliamentary
period (1956-58), while clearly stemming from fears for the national
exchequer, could also be attributed in part to the continuing impact
of old conceptions of center-province relationships as indicators of the
"health" of the regime. A parallel line of argument was suggested for
patterns of administrative behavior at the center, particularly after
the restoration of the 1945 Constitution in 1959. This Constitution, it
was pointed out, provides explicitly that cabinet ministers are to be
the assistants of the president and responsible to him alone.
Under the 1945 Constitution, formal norms and traditional
propensities tended to coincide. Insofar as real Power is
seen to flow out of the concentrated center and not from
the diffuse perimeter, ministerial behavior should reflect
the wishes of the former rather than the latter. The
same argument helps to explain the ease with which many
Javanese accepted the emergence under both the authori-
tarian Sukarno and Suharto regimes of informal power-
groups outside the "rational-lega," structure of the
bureaucracy. The so-called golongan istono (palace
group) under Guided Democracy and the President's SPRI
(private staff) under the New Order represented the
6.	Ibid., p. 36.
7.	Ibid.16
kitchen cabinet of the ruler, his personal agents and con-
fidants. The enormous power they in fact wielded de-
pended solely on the fact that their proximity to the cen-
ter was recognized by the entire politico-administrative
elite.8
This "reemergence" of precolonial patterns of government has
been frequently commented on—and condemned—by Indonesians, not
least by a number of prominent army officers who had hoped that the
New Order would live up to its promise of 1966 to bring about a
"total correction" after the various excesses of the past. Many of
these critics refer deprecating,y to the state over which Suharto rules
as "the new Mataram," an allusion to the dominant kingdom on Java in
the years after 1582 and to the president's success in evoking the at-
mosphere of a Javanese kraton (palace), in which politics is fre-
quently a matter of court intrigue and in which one powerful "prince"
is played off against another for the greater good of the ruler.
Other critics have drawn attention to the fact that patrimonial prac-
tices are rampant in the economy; one does not have to look far,
these critics contend, to find a ruler who, true to traditional pat-
terns, underpins his authority by the allocation of specified benefices
to his subordinates.
Given all this, it would be hard to deny the continuing "pul,"
of patrimonialism in Indonesia. On the other hand, one should not
make too much of this. Postindependence Indonesia is not precolonia,
Java, and while some of the patterns of the past may indeed be
"shadowing" contemporary Indonesia there are obvious deficiencies in
neo-patrimonia, explanations of the present. The danger is that
"neo-patrimonialism" provides an all-too-convenient rationalization of
and "explanation" for almost any conceivable excess of centrism or
authoritarianism, explanations which bring with them comforting as-
surances that any such developments are in harmony with something
in the Javanese soul. The concept is a useful adjunct to our under-
standing but is simply too all-embracing to be of much value on its
own.9
Suharto's style of leadership during the early years of the New
Order certainly encouraged the belief that he followed an essentially
patrimonial approach, great authority being delegated to those like
Lt. Co,, (later Lt. Gen.) Ali Murtopo who were acquaintances of long
standing and who tended to operate outside the "rational-lega," struc-
tures of government. However, this phenomenon needs to be seen in
the context of the times. The postcoup period was one of great un-
certainty in Indonesia, in the army no less than in other institutions,
and there were compelling reasons why a new leader would seek to
8.	Ibid., pp. 37-38.
9.	This is not to suggest that Anderson has rushed to rationalize
excesses of authoritarianism; his interest was in the mind of the
Javanese rather than in any putative sou,.17
bring with him, and work with, associates on whom he could depend
explicitly, rather than associate himself with "outsiders.” While it
would be a mistake to discount the continuing impact of "feudal" or
"patrimonial" influences on Suharto, a case can be made for the argu-
ment that the president is, in fact, a "rationalizer" and "modernizer,"
a man who moved, once he was securely in office, to formalize the
administration and put it on a more rational-legal basis. In 1966, for
example, the most prominent of the Indonesian "technocrats"—Dr.
Widjojo Nitisastro, Dr. Ali Wardhana, Dr. Emil Salim, Dr. Mohammad
Sadli, and Dr. Subroto—were members of a special team attached to
Suharto's personal staff. By 1971, all of them had been appointed to
the cabinet. Suharto, it is true, did not "dismiss" the remaining
members of his kitchen cabinet, most of whom were senior army offi-
cers, until forced to do so in 1974 by outside events. But several of
his personal assistants had by then moved across into the bureau-
cracy proper, or had at least a nominal position within it, a trend
which continued in the years thereafter.10 In time, the distinction
between those who were "inside" and those who were "outside" the
rational-legal structure became less relevant. As this process con-
tinued, the New Order leaders were strengthening and extending par-
allel civilian-military administrative structures which, reaching down
to the village level, gave the regime a base far more resilient, inter-
locking, and permanent than anything based on the more transitory
nature of personal loyalty. Though officials not infrequently adopted
a "feudal" manner in their dealings with both their subordinates and
the public, the existence of the administrative framework made patri-
monial explanations of contemporary Indonesian leadership less than
adequate. As Donald Emmerson has correctly observed, Suharto is
more than a neopatrimonial prince dispensing favors and fiats. "He
has not only built a government but around it a regime, whose struc-
tures are more solid than a purely personalistic or Javanese-cultural
conception of power in the New Order would allow."11
10.	Much the same sort of thing occurred in the United States when
Dr. Henry Kissinger moved across from the Nixon White House (where
he had served as national security adviser) to become secretary of
state. In practical terms, the distinctions about being "inside" or
"outside" the system seem largely irrelevant. In this context, there
are interesting similarities between the Indonesian and the US presi-
dential systems. If the former bestows on the Head of State much of
the power and panoply of a precolonial Javanese king, then the lat-
ter, as Thomas Jefferson averred in 1787, was created as an "elective
monarchy." "The office," says Huntington, "was designed to embody
much of the power of the British king; and the politics that surround
it are court politics." See Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in
Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p.
114.
11.	Donald K. Emmerson, "Indonesian Politics in the 1980s: Pressure
and Counterpressure," (Paper delivered at State Department meeting
on Indonesia, April 1981), p. 6.18
An alternative—and perhaps more appropriate—approach would
be to describe Indonesia in "praetorian” terms, as a nation in which,
in Nordlinger’s words, military officers are "major or predominant po-
litical actors by virtue of their actual or threatened use of force."12
The term praetorianism comes from the elite Praetorian Guard of the
Roman Empire, first established to protect the emperor but which
eventually used its military power to overthrow emperors and to con-
trol the appointment of their successors. Praetorianism (or military
intervention) occurs, Nordlinger suggests, in various coup situations,
and most particularly when officers themselves take control of the
government. In such cases, civilian regimes are transformed into mil-
itary regimes, even though certain civilian individuals and groups of-
ten enjoy a good measure of political influence.
In delimiting the subject of praetorianism, Nordlinger says, it is
necessary to ask whether a military regime is still so considered ten
or twenty years after the coup, even if it is "civilianized," with the
leaders shedding their military uniforms and taking on the title of
president or prime minister. The answer, he suggests, is yes, if the
military took power by means of a coup, the highest government offi-
cials have served (or continue to serve) in the armed forces, and the
governors are primarily dependent upon the support of the officer
corps for the retention of power.
Praetorians invariably portray themselves as responsible and
patriotic officers who have intervened in civilian affairs because of an
overriding responsibility to constitution and nation, taking it upon
themselves to decide if the constitution has been violated or the na-
tional interest subverted, and thus whether or not intervention is
warranted. The military argue that they have a special responsi-
bility, "a crucial mission that transcends their obligations to existing
authorities." This, says Nordlinger, is praetorianism’s basic public
rationale.
Particular coups are justified by charging the former
civilian incumbents with a shorter or longer list of per-
formance failures. The soldiers almost invariably claim
that constitutional principles have been flouted by the
corrupt, arbitrary, or illegal actions of the civilian in-
cumbents. They are also commonly accused of having
acted contrary to the national interest by allowing sub-
versive groups to threaten the country's internal se-
curity, by fomenting class and communal conflicts and
thereby encouraging political disorder and violence, by
adopting policies that resulted in low economic growth
rates, widespread unemployment, and inflationary spirals,
or by failing to undertake programs of socioeconomic mod-
ernization and reform.
12. Eric A. Nordlinger, Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Gov-
ernments (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1977), p. 2.19
At the same time the praetorians confidently assert
that they will restore the country to political and econom-
ical good health. They are willing and able to do so be-
cause the officer corps is highly patriotic, detached from
the interests of particular class and communal groups,
devoid of the politicians' weaknesses, and highly skilled
in technical and managerial matters. Given these at-
tributes, along with the determination to succeed, the
military governors announce that they will eliminate cor-
ruption, root out subversive elements, curb political dis-
order, generate economic growth, and bring a halt to in-
flationary spirals. Some praetorians go on to announce
their intentions to modernize the economy and implement
progressive socioeconomic policies. But the predominant
theme is that of praetorians as saviors, promising to
remedy and rectify past civilian failures, rather than
committing themselves to the fashioning of a better or dif-
ferent society.
Lastly, almost all praetorians announce their intention
to hand over the reins of government to democratically
elected civilians in the near or distant future. . . ,13
There are, Nordlinger argues, three kinds of praetorian offi-
cers—moderators, guardians, and rulers. Praetorian moderators ex-
ercise a veto power over a varied range of governmental decisions,
without however taking control of the government themselves.
Praetorian guardians are those who, having overthrown a civilian
government, retain governmental power in their own hands, usually
for a period of two to four years. Ruler-type praetorians not only
control the government but dominate the regime, and their political
and economic objectives are exceptionally ambitious. The far-reaching
nature of the intended changes and the realization that the changes
will take considerable time to become securely rooted "necessitates re-
gime dominance and an indefinite period of military rule." Ruler-type
praetorians seek to bring about basic changes in the distribution of
power by eliminating nearly all existing power centers. Some ruler-
type praetorians "attempt to mobilize the population by creating mass
parties (or movements) over which they have exclusive control.
Polity, economy, and society are to be penetrated from above."
Contemporary Indonesia, it is suggested, displays many if not
all of the characteristics described by Nordlinger and fits without any
great difficulty into what he describes as a ruler-type praetorian cat-
egory.14 At the same time, there are certain features that make
13.	Ibid., pp. 20-21.
14.	The army did not come to power in Indonesia through a coup
launched by senior officers, one of the basic givens in Nordlinger's
concept of praetorianism. As we have seen, there had been a pro-
gressive expansion in army involvement since the late 1950s, culminat-20
the Indonesian experience unique. For one thing, the military’s right
to participate in nonmilitary affairs, which is traced back to the revo-
lutionary period and which has been imbued with an almost mystical
significance, is said to be everlasting. As Anderson has noted, "un-
like even the Pinochet regime in Chile, the New Order holds out no
prospects whatever of a 'return to civilian rule' or a 'restoration of
parliamentary government.'"15 For another, the ruler-type prae-
torianism that is found in Indonesia is centered to an extraordinary
degree on the person of Suharto and a few key members of his inner
circle. The army, although enormously powerful in day-to-day ad-
ministration, has surprisingly little influence on policy formation. For
the most part, army officers merely implement decisions that have
been taken by others in Jakarta; they generally have little, if any,
say in those decisions, a situation very different from that which
prevailed twenty years ago. Under Suharto, power is not only cen-
tralized but held in very few hands. The president, in the final
analysis, depends on the services of perhaps a dozen key military of-
ficers, each of whom presides in turn over tightly organized and
often mutually-antagonistic pyramids of authority.
The "Core Group" Around Suharto
In the mid-1970s, the members of this "core group" included
General Maraden Panggabean, the minister of defense and security/
commander of the armed forces; Lt. Gen. (later Gen.) Amir Machmud,
the minister of home affairs; Lt. Gen. (later Gen.) Yoga Sugama, the
head of Bakin, the State Intelligence Coordinating Board; Lt. Gen.
Ali Murtopo, the deputy head of Bakin and former head of the presi-
dent's "kitchen cabinet" for political affairs; Admiral Sudomo, the
chief of staff (later commander) of Kopkamtib; Maj. Gen. (later Gen.)
Benny Murdani,16 the assistant for intelligence to the minister of de-
fense; Lt. Gen. Sudharmono, the state secretary; Lt. Gen. (later
Gen.) Darjatmo, the chief of staff for nonmilitary affairs at the Minis-
ing in a full take-over in the mid-1960s. Even so, Indonesia would
appear to be in all other respects a near-perfect example of a ruler-
type praetorian society.
15.	Benedict R. Anderson, "Nationalism and the State in Modern In-
donesia" (Paper contributed to the Japanese Political Science Associa-
tion Round Table Conference on National Interest and Political Leader-
ship, Tokyo, 1982), p. 41.
16.	Murdani, being younger than the others, was in a category of
his own. Although he had joined the revolutionary struggle, at the
age of sixteen, in December 1948, he was not in any sense of the rev-
olutionary generation. "Even Benny says his relationship with the
president is like that of father and son. He makes no bones about
it. He doesn't eyeball to eyeball like Sumitro or Ali." Confidential
communication, November 14, 1981.21
try of Defense; Lt. Gen. Ibnu Sutowo, the president director of Per-
tamina, the huge state-owned oil company; and perhaps one or two
others.17 (Two prominent and powerful members of the group—
General Sumitro, the former commander of Kopkamtib/deputy comman-
der of the armed forces; and Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono, the former
head of Bakin—had been forced onto the sidelines following the
so-called "Malari" riots of January 1974. Ibnu Sutowo, a man on
whom Suharto had depended to a very great extent for extra-budget-
ary financing, was likewise forced out in early 1975 following
disclosures that Pertamina was on the brink of bankruptcy.)
Each of the officers in the core group could count on the sup-
port (either personal or institutional) of his own particular ’’pyra-
mid." For example, the "Amir Machmud group" centered on the
powerful Ministry of Home Affairs and thus commanded the support of
those serving in what was, after the Ministry of Defense and Security
(Hankam), the most important government department. The "Ali Mur-
topo group" was built around Murtopo's position as a powerful force
in the intelligence community and included, under the same umbrella,
the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a "think
tank" modeled on the Rand Corporation and largely run by Chinese
Catholic intellectuals with whom Murtopo had become associated during
the anti-Sukarno actions of the mid-1960s. The "Sudharmono group"
was a cluster of senior officers in or close to the State Secretariat,
the most important members of which were graduates of the Military
Law Academy (AHM) in Jakarta. By the early eighties, when the in-
fluence of this group was at its peak, the Sudharmono group exer-
cised almost untrammeled control of the Indonesian judicial system.
Its members included the minister of justice, Lt. Cen. Ali Said; the
attorney general, Maj. Gen. Ismail Saleh; and the chief justice of the
Supreme Court, Lt. Cen. Mudjono. Other members were Maj. Cen.
E. J. Kanter, the effective head of the Opstib anti-graft operation,
and Maj. Cen. August Marpaung, the general manager of Antara, the
government-run news agency. As state secretary, Sudharmono not
only had constant access to the president (while controlling the
access of almost all others); he also had authority, after the in-
troduction of Presidential Decision No. 10 of 1980, to screen all
government purchases for goods and services of more than Rp. 500
million (US $770,000), a power which greatly enhanced his position
and influence.
17. Other generals, many of whom had an economic-logistics back-
ground, were associated with Suharto in a more private capacity.
Maj. Gen. (retd) Sudjono Humardhani, a financial-economic adviser to
the president over many years, was widely regarded at this time as
Suharto’s spiritual "senior" and adviser on kepercayaan (Javanese
mystic beliefs). Maj. Gen. Bustanil Arifin, head of Bulog, the Na-
tional Logistics Board, was likewise a member of Suharto's private
circle. (Bustanil's wife was related to Madame Suharto.) Maj. Cen.
Surjo Wirjohadiputro, Suharto's onetime assistant for financial affairs,
also retained links with the president, at least initially.22
Each of these groupings was in orbit around Suharto, and the
president was able to manipulate them in such a way that they were
not united but remained in competition with one another. Highly
skilled at playing one "prince" off against another and believing in
the need for a "creative tension" between those who served him, Su-
harto had adopted a style of divide and rule under which the position
of potential rivals was effectively weakened while his own position was
effectively enhanced.
Within this constellation of forces there was an "inner core
group"—known variously as the "kitchen cabinet" or the "central com-
mittee"—made up of Javanese officers who enjoyed particularly close
relations with Suharto.
The "Inner Core Group"
When Suharto came to power in the mid-1960s, he relied to a
very considerable extent on a small group of advisers drawn from the
army.18 In August 1966 he established a private staff (Staf Pribadi,
or SPRI) which consisted of six army officers and two teams of civil-
ian specialists on economic affairs. By 1968, the SPRI had twelve
members and was widely regarded as an "invisible government" which
enjoyed greater powers than the cabinet, particularly in the field of
policy formation. SPRI members were responsible for such matters as
finance, politics, foreign intelligence, domestic intelligence, social
welfare, and general elections affairs, as well as "general affairs" and
"special affairs."19 The dominant members of this group were offi-
cers with whom Suharto had been associated for a number of years.
The coordinator of the SPRI, Maj. Gen. Alamsjah Ratu Perwiranegara,
had been a close friend of Suharto since the two men served together
on the headquarters of the army staff in 1960. Three others—Ali
Murtopo, Sudjono Humardhani, and Yoga Sugama—had served on Su-
harto's staff when he was commander of the Centra, Java Diponegoro
military region in the late 1950s and had been with him again later in
Kostrad, the army strategic reserve. Alamsjah and Sudjono Humard-
hani had a background in army finance. Ali Murtopo and Yoga
Sugama were intelligence officers, Ali heading an independent intelli-
gence unit known as Opsus (Special Operations), which had been set
up within Kostrad in 1964 to seek ways of putting an end to "Con-
frontation" with Malaysia.
Although the SPR, was dissolved in June 1968 following student
and press protests, key members of the group retained their influ-
ence. Alamsjah, who had been appointed state secretary in February
that year, was now given control over the president's official staff.
Yoga Sugama, the SPR, officer responsible for domestic intelligence,
18.	Harold Crouch, The Army and Politics in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cor-
nel, University Press, 1978), p. 307.
19.	Ibid.23
became deputy head and then head of Bakin in the same year. Mean-
while, Maj. Gen. (later Lt. Gen.) Surjo Wirjohadiputro, the SPRI offi-
cer in charge of finance, Sudjono Humardhani (economy), and Ali
Murtopo (foreign intelligence) were appointed personal assistants
(ASPRI) to Suharto; Murtopo's Opsus continued to undertake "special
operations" on behalf of the president, the opposition of some senior
staff generals (and in particular General Sumitro) notwithstanding.
The composition of this inner group around Suharto was not
unchanging. In 1971 Alamsjah was sent as ambassador to the Nether-
lands, partly because he had failed to finesse several difficult assign-
ments, partly because of intrigues carried out by other members of
the inner group, most notably Ali Murtopo. In 1974, following the
Malari Affair, Suharto dissolved the ASPRI and "dismissed" Murtopo,
Humardhani, and Surjo. All three, however, maintained their links
with the president, even if, in the case of Humardhani and Surjo,
these did tend to fade with the passing of the years. Surjo, whose
name had been linked with a major fraud case in 1970-71 , was ap-
pointed president director of the Hotel Indonesia and later given per-
mission to build two large new Jakarta hotels, the Mandarin and the
Hilton. Humardhani maintained his interest in forging closer economic
links with Japan, while serving also as a spiritual counsellor to the
president, a follower of kebatinan (Javanese mystic beliefs).
Murtopo’s star, meanwhile, was at its zenith. His key rival, Sumitro,
had been forced into retirement and replaced as head of Kopkamtib by
Admiral Sudomo, an officer with whom Murtopo had good working rela-
tions. A Murtopo protege", Brig. Gen. Benny Murdani, had been
brought in to replace an associate of Sumitro as assistant for intelli-
gence to the minister of defense.20 Murtopo had excellent relations
with Lt. Gen. Ibnu Sutowo, the freewheeling president director of
Pertamina, and would soon see another of his prot£g£s , Brig. Gen.
Abdul Rahman Ramly, installed as head of the state tin company.
Murtopo was the deputy in charge of operations at Bakin, retained
his control over Opsus, a body answerable only to Suharto, and was
co-sponsor (along with Sudjono Humardhani) of the CSIS.
In the mid-1970s, the four most important members of the
"inner core group" were Yoga Sugama, Ali Murtopo, Sudomo, and
Benny Murdani. This was not in any sense a homogeneous body; its
members enjoyed close relations with the president more on an indi-
vidual than a group basis. Nevertheless, there was a certain una-
nimity of view on key issues and an ability to work together in times
of stress. The members of the "inner core group" were men with
whom Suharto had not only had close relations for many years but
with whom he felt most comfortable. Officers like Mohammad Jusuf,
20. As in the case of earlier key appointments, Suharto fell back on
officers with whom he had a long-established relationship and on
whom he felt he could depend; Sudomo and Murdani, both Javanese
Christians, had been associated with Suharto in the early 1960s when
he was head of the Mandala Command for the liberation of West Irian.24
who was appointed minister of defense in 1978, Panggabean, and (be-
fore his downfall) Sumitro, could work in close cooperation with the
president, but could never be considered his closest confidants.
Even Amir Machmud, a blunt but loyal instrument of the president,
was outside this innermost circle. "Sudomo, Benny, and Yoga are
closest to Suharto,” a retired general observed in 1981. ’’They have
personal relations, outside their official relations. If you talk about
Amir Machmud and Jusuf and Sumitro they have their relations more
according to their work, not personal."21
What was most striking about this inner group, apart from its
members' loyalty to, and length of association with, the president,
was the predominance of officers with an intelligence or security
background. Three of the four men on whom Suharto depended most
—Ali Murtopo, Benny Murdani, and Yoga Sugama—were from the in-
telligence field while the fourth—Sudomo—held extraordinary security
powers. If in the late 1970s and early 1980s policy was decided at
the top of the army pyramid in Jakarta, then that policy was shaped
to a quite extraordinary degree by intelligence and security officers.
This tended to antagonize many senior officers at the Ministry of De-
fense and Security and sharpen traditional rivalries between officers
from the intelligence and operations branches of the army.22 Al-
21.	Confidential communication, March 2, 1981.
22.	These rivalries appear to have peaked at the time of the Indone-
sian invasion of East Timor in 1975. The invasion plans were drawn
up by Maj. Gen. Benny Murdani without the knowledge or participa-
tion of key members of the operational staff. The deputy commander
of the armed forces (Wapangab), General Surono Reksodimedjo, who
was as much in the dark as anyone else, registered his displeasure
by going off shortly thereafter on the haj f leaving Murdani's group to
complete the takeover. Surono felt that as Wapangab he should have
known what was planned. Surono was not the only officer upset over
the invasion. The Kostrad commander, Lt. Gen. Leo Lopulisa, who
would in the normal course of events have played a central role in
any such operation, was in Paris at the time and received a cable ad-
vising him that the invasion had gone through, without ever having
been asked if his troops were ready. Lopulisa confided to a retired
colleague not long after the invasion, "I am only the manager of a fu-
neral parlor. Only that! I am not involved. I am only in charge of
the funerals of the men who didn't come back.” (Confidential com-
munication, March 23,	1982.) In the view of some senior officers
from the operational side, Suharto was operating outside normal chan-
nels in bypassing Kostrad and relying on the Kopassandha (Komando
Pasukan Sandhi Yudha, or Secret Warfare Force) and the intelligence
community in such an operation. This view did not make allowance
for the fact that in many ways an expanded Kopassandha had taken
over some of the functions that were formerly the responsibility of
Kostrad. However, there were dangers in such methods, quite apart
from any considerations of operating "outside" the formal system. Al-25
though seldom explicit, this rivalry was to run like a thread through
the debate which took part in the late 1970s and early 1980s over
ABRI's role in Indonesian society. This dominance of intelligence and
security officers both reflected and reinforced Suharto's preoccupation
with a "security and development" approach to nation building.
A second feature was the unusual "doubling up" of functions in
the hands of the most trusted members of Suharto's inner circle. As
the editors of the bi-annual Cornell University journal Indonesia noted
in 1980, Sudomo had been effectively running Kopkamtib since Janu-
ary 1974 and had been deputy commander of the armed forces since
April 1978.23 Murdani had not only been assistant for intelligence in
the Defense Ministry since August 1974, but had also had the func-
tions of head of the Strategic Intelligence Center since August 1977
and deputy head of Bakin since early 1978. Yoga Sugama, who had
been the head of Bakin since January 1974, had served as chief of
staff of Kopkamtib from 1978 to 1980.21+ Although not a member of
though Kopassandha units fought well and were able to penetrate
deeply into enemy territory, they were not good at holding the
ground they had taken; "real" infantry, it was argued, would be able
to do this. In 1978, after he had stepped down as the secretary
general of ASEAN, Lt. Gen. Dharsono spoke with the newly installed
minister of defense, Genera, Jusuf, about the differences that existed
between the operational and intelligence branches of the armed forces.
Jusuf, according to Dharsono, was "having trouble at that time with
Murtopo," and the former Siliwangi commander suggested in effect
that some parts of that intelligence service be placed more firmly
under the control of Hankam. Jusuf is said to have listened and im-
plicitly conceded that there may have been a problem. However, he
did not comment on the proposal. Interview with Lt. Cen. Dharsono,
March 26, 1982.
23.	See "Current Data on the Indonesian Military Elite," Indonesia 39
(April 1980), p. 156. In March 1983 Sudomo was named minister for
labor in the fourth Suharto cabinet.
24.	According to one senior military officer in the Suharto "inner
core group," Yoga was only made chief of staff of Kopkamtib so that
he could get his fourth star. According to this account, Yoga felt
"upset" that other officers had been promoted to ful, genera, while he
was still a three-star officer. Because Bakin is nominally a civilian
agency, it was arranged that he could come back into the military
command structure, where he would be able to gain this promotion.
Yoga, it is said, did "nothing" at Kopkamtib during his two years as
chief of staff of that body. (Confidential communication, February
28, 1981.) Yoga flatly rejects this account, arguing that he was, in
fact, heavily involved in Kopkamtib affairs during this time. (Inter-
view, July 15, 1981.) While this may be open to question, there would
seem no reason for him to have taken on a "military" job in order to
be promoted. There was no rule against officers being promoted
while they were out on kekaryaan (nonmilitary) duties; indeed, Amir26
Table I. Overlapping Areas of Responsibility Within Suharto's
Inner Circle (1978-80)
		President		
Hankam		Kopkamtib		Bakin
Min. of Defense/
Commander of A F
Commander
Head
Jusuf
Dep. Comm, of AF
Sudomo
Assistant I (Intel!.)
Sudomo
Chief of Staff
Yoga Sugama-
Head of Kopkamtib
Intel!.
Yoga Sugama
deputy Head
Murdani
Murdani
Murdani
Murdani was also Kapusintelstrat (head of the Strategic In-
telligence Center). Unlike the assistant 1 slot, which had a coor-
dinating function, this position carried executive responsibility; in an
emergency, Murdani would have had operational command of all Kopas-
sandha forces.
The commander of the Kopassandha, Major General Yogie Suardi
Memet, was, at the same time, commander of Kodam Vl/Siliwangi (West
Java). Murdani and Yogie Memet were graduates of the postrevolu-
tionary Pusat Pendidikan Perwiraan-Angkatan Darat (P3-AD, or Army
Officers’ Training Center) in Bandung. As such, they were members
of a group of about 100 officers who formed a link between the
Generation of ’45 and the post-1960 graduates of the Armed Forces
Academy in Magelang. Popular with both Jusuf and Murdani, Yogi
Memet had served as a link between these two officers on occasions
when relations between them were not harmonious.
Within Bakin, there were other officers with persona, links to
Suharto. Maj. Gen. Rudjito, the head of one of the four Bakin de-
partments, was a Diponegoro officer who had been Suharto's intelli-
gence officer in the Mandala Command in the early 1960s. Brig. Gen.
Raden Mas Jono Hatmodjo, fourth deputy to the chief of Bakin in the
late 1970s, was a member of the Mangkunegoro royal family and a rel-
ative of Ibu Tien Suharto. (In April 1980, Jono Hatmodjo was in-
stalled as the director genera, for security and foreign relations at
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.)27
this inner group, Maj. Gen. Yogie Suardi Memet had been commander
of the Kopassandha (Army Paracommandos) since May 1975 and com-
mander of Military Region Vl/Siliwangi (West Java) since October
1978.25 This doubling of functions served Suharto well. For a
start, it allowed the president to fill many of the most important gov-
ernment and army posts without going outside his immediate circle.
At the same time, it created a system of checks and balances under
which the power and influence of key aides was kept in rough equi-
librium. (The appointment of Murdani to serve as deputy head of
Bakin under Yoga Sugama was a case in point; neither man had much
time for the other and each tended to go his own way, reporting di-
rectly to Suharto.)
A third—and closely related—feature was that the trusted mem-
bers of the "inner core group" had tended to be left in key positions
well beyond the normal two-year tour of duty. As noted above,
three members of this group—Sudomo, Murdani, and Yoga Sugama—
had remained in charge of the most important intelligence and security
positions since 1974. In similar vein, General Darjatmo, a longtime
associate of the president, had served as chief of staff for functional
affairs, an extremely powerful position in the social-political field, for
nine years (1969-78). This "immobility" in the intelligence/security
and sociopolitical fields contrasted with a fairly rapid turnover in
troop commands. Members of the inner core group were prepared to
admit in private that this practice hampered normal personnel manage-
ment; appointments, they said, were based more on trust than on
capability. However, this was understandable, they argued. Intelli-
gence was an extremely sensitive area—the situation in South Korea
at the time of the 1979 assassination of President Park Chung Hee was
often held up as an example—and it was very difficult, in the words
of one Suharto confidant, "to find someone you can really trust."26
A fourth feature was the unique position and "reach" of Mur-
dani. The three key pillars of Suharto's rule were Hankam, Kop-
kamtib, and Bakin, each one headed, as we have seen, by a Suharto
loyalist. Under the "doubling up" of functions noted above, between
1978 and 1983 Sudomo occupied a key position in two of these insti-
tutions (Hankam and Kopkamtib), while Yoga Sugama served for a
time in another two (Kopkamtib and Bakin). Murdani, however,
spanned all three. Between 1978-83 he was assistant for intelligence
(Asintel) at Hankam, assistant for intelligence at Kopkamtib
Machmud and Mohammad Jusuf had been regularly promoted while ser-
ving outside Hankam in ministerial capacities.
25.	In February 1983 Yogie Memet replaced Lt. Gen. Wijogo Atmo-
darminto as commander of Kowilhan II, the unified Regional Defense
Command for Java, Madura, and Nusatenggara. He later gave up the
posts of commander of Kodam Vl/Si,iwangi and commander of the
Kopassandha.
26.	Confidential communication, February 28, 1981 .28
(Asintelkopkamtib), and deputy head (Wakil Ketua) of Bakin. He was
also, as we have seen, head of the Strategic Intelligence Center
(Kapusintelstrat) in Hankam, a position which, like that of Asintel,
was technically under the chief of staff for operations. As such, his
responsibilities transcended those of coordination and planning in the
intelligence field. In his capacity as Asintelkopkamtib, Murdani was
the head of Satgasintel (Satuan Tugas Intelijen, or Intelligence Task
Unit); this empowered him, using the Kopkamtib decree, to detain
people for 48 hours or more. In his capacity of Kapusintelstrat,
Murdani would, in an emergency, have operational control of all
Kopassandha forces, the 5,000-man "praetorian guard" of Hankam.27
Beyond this, he was used by Suharto in a variety of other semi-
clandestine roles, mainly in the foreign affairs field; he had planned
and directed the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, had negotiated
the purchase of reconditioned A-4 Skyhawk jet fighters from Israel,
had made two secret visits (in 1980 and 1981) to Hanoi, held private
talks in Switzerland with the government’s key opponent in a sensi-
tive corruption case, and jointly supervised (with Yoga Sugama) the
storming of a hijacked Caruda jetliner in Bangkok. He had overall
responsibility for developments in East Timor, on both the military
and nonmilitary fronts, and overall responsibility for the resettlement
abroad of all Vietnamese refugees in Indonesia. At the same time, he
had become an indispensable member of the presidential entourage
whenever Suharto made important overseas visits, serving, inter alia,
as the unofficial head of the presidential bodyguard unit. Staunchly
loyal to Suharto, holding down key positions in each of the three
major power centers and with up to 5,000 highly-trained paratroops at
his disposal in an emergency, Murdani had become one of the most
powerful men in Suharto's Indonesia.28
27.	Confidential communication, March 8,	1981, confirmed by two
four-star generals. Formerly known as the RPKAD (Resimen Para
Komando Angkatan Darat, Army Paracommando Regiment), the Kopas-
sandha is divided into four grup (groups). There are two parakom
(para-commando) groups, each of 1 ,800 men, and two Sandhi Yudha
(Secret Warfare) groups, each of about 550-600 men. The two
parakom groups are stationed in West Java; the other two were moved
to Ujung Pandang under General Jusuf's plan to transfer some forces
out of Java. Members of the Kopassandha undergo an extremely rug-
ged 28-week training course. Administratively, Kopassandha is under
the army chief of staff; operationally, it would be deployed through
Hankam, the army being merely told to provide. The name Kopas-
sandha was substituted for RPKAD on February 17, 1971. For addi-
tional details on the origins of the force, see "29 Tahun Usia
Kopassandha Kita," in Merdeka, April 22, 1981.
28.	Murdani's influence also extended into other government depart-
ments. For example, Safari, the able and extroverted director
general for Asia and the Pacific at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
was widely considered a Murdani man. There were others too on
whom Murdani could call. For example, Maj. Gen. Nichlany Sudarjo,29
A fifth feature was that two of the four members of this core
group—Ali Murtopo and Yoga Sugama—were abangan (nominal Muslim)
Javanese from Suharto's home province of Central Java while the two
others—Sudomo and Murdani—were Javanese Christians; this, it will
be argued, was a predisposing factor in the socalled ",slam-phobia" of
the ruling group. (At the time of the 1977 general elections, Suharto
received Ignatius Joseph Kasimo, Frans Seda, and several other
leaders of the former Catholic Party. Before the group was seated
the president is said to have declared: "Our common enemy is Is-
lam! ")29
Sixth, in common with a number of other senior military offi-
cers, the members of the inner core group shared a similar outlook on
matters of business. They believed in being able to operate success-
fully outside the legal-rationa, economic system, in having mutually
beneficial links with cukong (financiers, often Chinese) and with for-
eign capita,. These links were maintained not so much to increase
the net wealth of the officers in question (although that, in most
cases, was a not unimportant consideration) but more to buttress the
financial base of the individual core groups, each of which needed a
more or less regular income in order to maintain its activities and its
position relative to the other groups. These shared business inter-
ests were, in true patrimonial style, a major part of the cement hold-
ing the ruling elite together, even if there was room at times for as
much conflict as cooperation between different economic groups.
What is also striking about this "core group" around Suharto
was that its members were of a singularly "pragmatic"—some might
say "Machiavellian"—cast of mind. And this, it will be argued, was
a CPM (military police) officer with considerable experience in intelli-
gence matters, had become a Cose acquaintance of Murdani's in the
mid-1970s when he (Nichlany) was serving as military attach^ in
Washington and Murdani was assistant for intelligence at Hankam.
This connection was of some use to Murdani when Nichlany served as
director general for immigration (1980-82). According to a member of
the Ali Murtopo group, Nichlany, who was associated with the
Sumitro-Sutopo Juwono group, had been sent to Washington by Yoga
Sugama after Yoga returned as head of Bakin in 1974, a move fully
supported by Murtopo. (Confidential communication, May 24, 1984.)
According to another source, Nichlany was sent to Washington "just
about 48 hours after he had an argument with Ali Murtopo. He stayed
there six years." (Confidential communication, February 19, 1981.)
Brig. Gen. Datuk R. Mulia SH, a member of the AHM (Military Law
Academy) group, had become associated with Murdani while serving as
deputy director for domestic intelligence in Murdani's office. This
link was useful when Datuk Mulia was later installed as deputy attor-
ney general, intelligence. In March 1983 Murdani was appointed com-
mander of the armed forces (Pangab), this position having been sepa-
rated from that of minister of defense.
29. Confidential communication, March 25, 1982.30
not simply a function of the demands imposed by their particular call-
ing. The Indonesian officer corps in general, and the intelligence
agencies in particular, are riven by a cleavage between those who
could be categorized as "pragmatic" and those who might best be de-
scribed as "principled." Suharto, for whatever reasons, has always
appeared to be more comfortable with members of the former group
and more inclined to take their counsel. This cleavage existed, for
the most part, below the surface and was often subsumed by a host
of other issues. However, it tended to become apparent in times of
stress. Thus, in 1974, the pragmatic-principled dichotomy ran
parallel to, and reinforced the divisions that existed between, what
Harold Crouch has described as the "military professionals" at Hankam
and the "political" and "financial" generals associated with the
Palace.30 In the intelligence field, this cleavage between "military
professionals/principled" officers on the one side and "political/
pragmatic" officers on the other was personified by Lt. Gen. Sutopo
Juwono, at that time head of Bakin, and Maj. Gen. Ali Murtopo, at
that time his deputy. By the late seventies, it will be argued, offi-
cers were once more placing themselves on one side of this divide or
the other. And though it was no longer entirely accurate to speak of
a Hankam-Palace cleavage, it was nonetheless true that the pragmatic
officers tended to be those clustered around Suharto. The more
"principled" group tended to be more closely associated with the army
proper, or at any rate with its nonintelligence sectors. There was in
all this an obvious correlation between "pragmatism" and "power hold-
ing" on the one hand and "principle/removed from power" on the
other. However, it would be wrong to see this as being no more
than an "in" group, "out" group phenomenon.
Those officers who might be described as "military pragmatists"
took the view that Indonesian society was still in transition and that
it was essential for the armed forces to play a major or dominant role
in everyday life. It was necessary, they believed, to channel politi-
cal developments in carefully determined directions. And if for some
reason the desired object was not being achieved, this group be-
lieved, it was proper and admissible to resort to what might euphe-
mistically be described as "other methods." By nature, Suharto was
inclined to seek consensus and harmony and, to achieve this, he re-
lied on the liberal use of the carrot and the limited use of the stick.
His preference was always to use carrots to bring people around.
The president appeared to believe that every man had his price, and
by means of the strategic distribution of patronage he had shown that
it was possible to buy off or coopt much of the opposition. The
stick—which was only brought out when the carrot had failed—ran
the gamut from intimidation, intervention, and arrest to the sometimes
spiteful and vindictive denial of "facilities."
Much of this could be described as standard political practice.
What set Suharto—or at least his chief lieutenants—apart was that
30. For details, see Crouch, Army and Politics, pp. 309-17.31
they appeared to have few, if any, scruples about relying on covert
intelligence operations to discredit and destabilize their political oppo-
nents. The principal aim of the Suharto inner circle was the en-
hancement or at least the maintenance of the military's dominant posi-
tion in society. And insofar as political Islam was seen by them as a
dark and malevolent force in society, a force that was manipulated by
those bent on the creation of an Islamic state, then it was fair game
for those who not only had the necessary instruments at hand but
who believed that their use was both desirable and necessary.
Such efforts were invariably taken in the name of upholding the
principles of the Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution. Moreover, they
were taken for the most part by men who genuinely believed that one
had to use all methods at hand, and at times cut a few corners, in
the interest of serving the greater good of society as a whole. The
pragmatists, believing, perhaps with good reason, that the forces of
stability and development might not command the unswerving support
of the populace in any fair fight under the inherited political system,
had seen fit to intervene extensively in the activities of various polit-
ical groupings in society. This had been done to ensure that these
groupings, discredited but with deep roots in Indonesian society, did
not reassert themselves and thereby jeopardize what the ruling group
sought to build. However, being only marginally more certain of a
satisfactory result even after such steps had been taken, they re-
served the right to continue their use of covert means to counter
their opponents.
In short, the pragmatists took the view that the end justified
the means. They believed that the intelligence services should, and
indeed must, manipulate the political processes in order to achieve the
desired result—a stable and prosperous Indonesia. And, having
identified political Islam as the major threat to such a society, they
felt justified in employing all the means at their disposal, including
the resources of the state intelligence services, to divide and dis-
credit the Muslim groupings. In doing so, they seemed to have the
full support of the president.
Suharto had, over the years, been well served by his more
pragmatic advisers, in particular by Ali Murtopo. In the efforts to
end Confrontation with Malaysia, to ensure a favorable Act of Free
Choice in West Irian, to neutralize the political parties, and so on,
Murtopo had proved himself a loyal and useful assistant. However,
on the domestic front at least, these "achievements" had been bought
at a high cost. In the words of an Indonesian social scientist, Ali
Murtopo and his advisers "have done the country a great disservice
because of the very great fears they have engendered in others of
Islam. Once you embark on that policy it becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy. Your fear of Islam creates a situation which makes your
fears come true."31
31. Confidential communication, August 8, 1978.32
In fact, it might be argued that this group had done the coun-
try a double disservice. They had not only fed and fashioned an ex-
aggerated fear of Islam. They had, in manipulating the democratic
processes so extensively and in resorting to "black operations" to
discredit their opponents, greatly eroded the government’s credibility
and engendered a deep-seated cynicism about the sort of things the
armed forces were prepared to do in order to remain in power. This,
combined with a Javanese disposition to find a dalang (literally,
puppeteer) behind every event—however improbable—had led people
to see the hand of Ali Murtopo in almost everything that appeared to
enhance the short-term interests of the government. As a result,
trust in the government's goodwill and good faith had been seriously
impaired.
The "principled" group, though not suggesting that ABRI with-
draw to the mountain top, wanted to see less military involvement in
society. Its members tended to be less suspicious of political Is-
lam—although this suspicion ran deep in the armed forces—and felt
there should be an essentially legal and predictable system of govern-
ment, one that was less corrupt, less free wheeling, and less inclined
to misuse the powers at its command, particularly those of the intelli-
gence services.
There was also another aspect. The pragmatists, by and large,
tended to be more action-oriented; they were "doers," few of whom
seemed to have much interest in abstract thought. The more princi-
pled officers tended to be better educated and more reflective, more
inclined to measure actions by fundamental moral considerations of
what was right and wrong. The more pragmatic officers of the inner
circle, intent on maintaining a state of affairs in which the military
exercised an all-pervasive influence in society and in which Islam was
kept well at bay, tended to be largely indifferent to arguments based
on moral considerations. They were inclined, by nature and training
and experience, to fall back on what their opponents saw as "Machia-
vellian" means to achieve their ends. And when, as happened from
time to time, those methods were exposed, they tended to shrug off
any suggestion of wrongdoing by saying in effect: "That's politics.
What do you expect?"
Those inclined towards a more principled approach, while just
as keen to see that the armed forces acted as the dinamisator and
stabilisator of society, believed not only that there were necessary
limits to military involvement but that there were moral constraints
that should govern their actions. In the view of these critics,
Suharto had extended ABRI's involvement beyond all reasonable limits
and had compromised the military's integrity by allowing it to give its
wholehearted backing to Golkar in two successive elections. Those
associated with the "reform" movement advocated a return to the
"pure" ideals of the TNI, as outlined at the second army seminar in
Bandung in August 1966, a reduction in the level of corruption, and
a less confrontational approach to Islamic groups.CHAPTER TWO
THE STRUCTURE OF ARMY DOMINANCE
I know this man [Suharto] very well. He is not feeling
safe. He has got concrete power, the weapons, in his
hands and he won't permit any argument. As he said at
that time [1948] in Yogyakarta, "My politics are at the
end of the bayonet."
— Retired General1
Pak Harto is a plain soldier, you see. He's only protect-
ing the Pancasila in his own way.
—General Sumitro2
The New Order leaders had, from the very start, committed
themselves to an adherence to Pancasila, including the principle of
popular sovereignty, and to the 1945 Constitution, with all that that
implied about a Parliament elected through a free and secret ballot.
This, it was felt, was essentia, if the New Order was to maintain its
legitimacy. However, as Donald Hindley has observed, neither Su-
harto nor those around him "envisioned the sharing of real power
with the political parties, let alone its transfer to them."3 The par-
ties were seen as discredited patronage machines, staffed by oppor-
tunists and serving narrow sectional interests. An even more funda-
mental concern, key members of the Suharto group have argued, was
that the two major surviving political parties—the traditional (and
traditionally accommodative) Nahdatu, Ulama (Muslim Scholars' Party)
and the pro-Sukarnoist Partai Nasiona, Indonesia (PNI)—contained
powerful elements that were bent on changing the Pancasila and the
1945 Constitution.
In the late 1960s, Suharto had adopted a more conciliatory
approach to the political parties than the socalled "New Order radi-
cals," officers like Maj. Gen. (later Lt. Gen.) H. R. Dharsono and
Maj. Gen. (later Lt. Gen.) Kema, Idris, who displayed an undisguised
1.	Confidential communication, November 10, 1981.
2.	Interview with General Sumitro, December 12, 1981.
3.	Donald Hindley, "Indonesia 1971: Pantjasila Democracy and the
Second Parliamentary Elections," Asian Survey 12 (January 1972): 57.
3334
contempt for the existing political groupings and who sought the im-
mediate use of the army's power to force through rapid modernization.
Suharto feared that the radicals1 desire for utmost haste, backed up
if necessary by coercion, would only exacerbate the existing divisions
and hostilities within Indonesian society,4 5 an assessment which was
almost certainly correct. Nevertheless, Suharto remained wary of
political parties in general and of the PNI and the NU in particular.
Once he felt he was in a position to proceed, he took steps to ensure
that neither party would again pose what he saw as a threat to the
very foundations of the state. According to General Sumitro, Suharto
was "obsessed” that the Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution were in
danger. "Until the introduction of the Political Parties Law in 1975,"
the former Kopkamtib commander said in 1981, "he was still doubting
the stance of the political party organizations.1,5
According to close military associates, Suharto was convinced
that the NU and the PNI were not content with the Pancasila as it
was. The NU, he believed, wanted the "Pancasila plus"—meaning the
Pancasila plus the Jakarta Charter.6 Suharto saw Muslim leaders'
continuing preoccupation with the Jakarta Charter as proof that im-
portant elements within the Islamic community were still bent on the
creation of an Islamic state, something to which the army remained
unalterably opposed.
According to members of the ruling group, Suharto believed the
PNI was likewise insisting on a "Pancasila Plus," their demand being
for the Pancasila plus the word Marhaenism (a reference to the politi-
cal philosophy elaborated by the late President Sukarno) or Pancasila
plus kerakyatan (popular sovereignty). Sukarno had frequently made
the point, New Order leaders noted, that Marhaenism was Marxism
applied to Indonesian conditions, and this notion was, in their view,
totally unacceptable.7 "About 80 percent of the [former] PN, mem-
4.	Donald Hindley, "Alirans and the Fall of the Old Order," Indone-
sia 9 (April 1970): 57.
5.	Sumitro interview, December 12, 1981.
6.	See above, p. 7.
7.	Feith has described Marhaenism as a philosophy of "proletarian
nationalism." However, the term is misleading. Sukarno, concerned
above all with the forging of national unity, rejected in the 1920s the
argument of the Indonesian Communists that the proletariat was the
most powerful force that could be marshalled against the Dutch,
partly because the proletariat was too small, but more significantly
because he feared that this would lead to class struggle rather than
national struggle. The term Marhaenism, which took its name from a
small farmer Sukarno claimed to have met near Bandung, was more
embracing. The proletariat, Sukarno argued, could be included in
the Marhaen ranks and might in fact be the most revolutionary group.
But it was not the force to be singled out.35
bers are influenced by the Communists," the minister of religion, Lt.
Gen. Alamsjah Ratu Perwiranegara, a key member of the Suharto
group in the late 1960s, claimed in 1982.* * * * * * * 8 In theory, there could be
no such objections to the PNI’s use of kerakyatan, a term which en-
joys a place of honor in both the Pancasila and the preamble to the
1945 Constitution. But within the ruling councils of the New Order,
the kerakyatan of the PNI was seen as "a different kerakyatan," one
built on the dangerous sands of mass action and allowing for the
unbridled expression of the popular will. "Their kerakyatan,"
Alamsjah argued, "is the kerakyatan according to the doctrine of
socialism. And that is still a danger."9
In the 1960s, this political theory became complex and confused,
and Sukarno himself did define Marhaenism as Marxism applied to spe-
cific Indonesian conditions. On the origins of the Marhaenist doc-
trine, see Bernhard Dahm, Sukarno and the Struggle for Indonesian
Independence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969), pp. 143-55. I
am indebted to Ruslan Abdulgani for his comments on the evolution of
Marhaenism.
8.	Interview with Lt. Gen. Alamsjah Ratu Perwiranegara, March 24,
1982. Crouch has argued (personal communication) that Alamsjah's
view of the PNI does not necessarily represent that of the Javanese
generals, many of whom are related to PNI figures by blood or by
marriage. Although Alamsjah is non-Javanese, I would suggest that
the Javanese officers around Suharto take essentially the same view,
even when they have family links to the PNI. Sumitro was a case in
point.
9.	Alamsjah interview, March 24, 1982. Many of these suspicions re-
main, particularly those having to do with the role and ambitions of
political Islam. In his National Day address in 1981 Suharto said that
"we do not need to cover up the fact that . . . threats to Pancasila
indeed do exist both from extreme left and extreme right views. And
up to this very day we cannot yet say that these threats to Pancasila
do not exist any longer." Only when Pancasila was truly "accul-
turized" and reflected in the practices of daily life would its pur-
suance be guaranteed.
Meanwhile, I need to remind us all that we may not be lax
and feel self-satisfied. There are still dangers for
Pancasila and they can come from both without and from
within. The dangers from without stem from other ideolo-
gies or other ideas that do indeed want to be enforced on
our nation. Dangers can come from within if we our-
selves do not, in the fullest sincerity, practice Pancasila
in our personal lives and in our common life.
See Address of State by President Suharto to the DPR, August 15,
1981. State Secretariat, 1981, p. 5.36
There is not much in this explanation which is persuasive. The
fear of the power of political Islam certainly ran deep in the thinking
of the New Order generals, a point of central importance in any
understanding of contemporary Indonesian politics. But it is doubtful
that the New Order leaders were all that concerned by the PNI and
Marhaenism, or for that matter by the majority of the NU. Their
concerns centered on some NU and ex-Masyumi radicals. What seems
likely is that the allegations that the PNI wanted "Pancasila Plus”
were intended to make more "even-handed" the attack on Islam’s
"Pancasila Plus," which was the real target.
It is almost certainly true, as a number of observers have sug-
gested, that these concerns were manipulated by Suharto's principal
lieutenants, most notably Ali Murtopo, for short-term political pur-
poses. It is also almost certainly true that the activities of men like
Murtopo were undertaken with at least the tacit approval of Suharto
himself. However, it would be wrong to interpret the talk of "threats
to the Pancasila" as nothing more than the manipulation of an integra-
tive symbol by men bent on maintaining and furthering army rule.
The concern was genuine enough, even if the manipulation carried out
in the name of protecting the Pancasila often tended to obscure that
fact.10
Suharto's answer to this dilemma—which involved a drastic re-
structuring of the political landscape—centered on the transformation
of a loose coalition of army-backed "functional groups" into a full-
10. In some ways, Suharto was himself open to the charge of seeking
to change the Pancasila. For Sukarno, the Pancasila was not only
based on the unity of the Indonesian nation but strongly anticolonial
in nature. If Communists and Muslims were prepared to accept the
basic tenets of the Pancasila and were anticolonia, in outlook then
Sukarno was content to let them pursue their various goals in the po-
litical arena. Only when he saw their actions as a threat not only to
himself but to the state as well did Sukarno ban the Muslim Masyumi
political organization. Significantly, the other Muslim groupings were
left untouched. For Suharto, the "threat" often appears to be Islam
as a whole. Though nominally Muslim, Suharto is deeply influenced
by kebatinan and he has sought to give the Pancasila an infusion of
ethical values stemming from Java's pre-lslamic past. In this sense,
Suharto is seeking, consciously or unconsciously, to "Javanize" the
Pancasila. The essence of the Pancasila, he believes, is to be found
in traditional Javanese precepts. This being so, there is no need in
his view for Islam to come with "new" ethical values. For my under-
standing of the way in which the president views the Pancasila, I am
indebted to Ruslan Abdulgani, General Sumitro, Lt. Gen. Sutopo
Juwono, and Lt. Gen. Alamsjah. The material in this section is
drawn in large part from the following interviews: Ruslan Abdulgani
(March 24 and March 26, 1982), General Sumitro (December 12, 1981),
Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono (March 22, 1982), and Lt. Gen. Alamsjah
(March 20 and March 24, 1982).37
blown government political ’’party/’ and the systematic undermining of
existing political institutions. In the late 1960s, Suharto’s military
associates began transforming Sekber Golkar, the Joint Secretariat of
the Functional Groups, into a fully-fledged political grouping.
Through manipulation, intervention, and obstruction, those same aides
were able to circumscribe the power of all major political parties save
the NU, the leaders of which had shown themselves to be as amenable
to the wishes of the new ruling group as they had to those of the
old.
Even so, the parties still had deep roots in Indonesian society
and the ruling military officers could not be at all sure that Sekber
Golkar would command a majority of votes in the forthcoming 1971
general elections. Sumitro, who was at that time a key member of the
ruling group, believes that Golkar (as the group later became known)
would not have had a chance on its own: ”If you had left it to
Golkar in 1971, without any interference by ABRI, the Muslim parties
would have won. I can assure you of that! Oh yes! Seventy One!
Seventy Seven! Without the help of ABRI, PPP [Muslim Party] would
have won. And won a majority!”11
In order to achieve the necessary victory for the functional
group, Suharto's aides resorted to widespread intimidation and
coercion, as a result of which Golkar achieved a decisive electoral
victory, carrying off 62 percent of the votes.
Suharto thus sought to maintain the outward trappings of demo-
cratic rule while at the same time ensuring that an expression of the
popular will did not "jeopardize" either the Pancasila, the 1945 Con-
stitution, or, more particularly, the stability of military rule. This,
the ruling group was convinced, was the only realistic way to pro-
ceed. The result was that the government went through the motions
of upholding the letter of the Constitution while steadfastly ignoring
its underlying principles and intent. The president went to great
lengths to present himself as a strict constitutionalist and provided al,
the formal trappings of popular sovereignty, as specified in the Con-
stitution. There was a People’s Consultative and a People's Repre-
sentative Council [Dewon Perwakilan Rakyat, DPR). There were
periodic elections and secret ballots. The president was "elected" by
the MPR, and his ministers and senior officials made routine appear-
ances before DPR committees to report back to the people's represen-
tatives and answer questions about government policy. All of this
meant little. The legislative branch lived very much in the shadow of
the executive; in the MPR of 1978-83, 86 percent of the 920 represen-
tatives owed their positions in one way or another to their selection
by bodies that were largely under the influence of the president or
his chief lieutenants.12 What is more, Suharto never reported back
11.	Interview with General Sumitro, December 12, 1981.
12.	When Suharto was seeking a third five-year term in 1978, there
were times when the MPR resembled a chamber of mirrors in which a38
to the particular MPR which "elected" him; he reported instead to the
new one—and after reelection. It is also worth noting that no legisla-
tive body under the New Order had ever passed a law "of its own."
"The governing elite/’ writes Allan Sampson, "perceived the
appropriate role of political participation to be that of passive
approval or legitimation through controlled symbolic acts."1^ The
election amounted to no more than the "organized ratification" of the
rule of a military regime.li+ However, as Benedict Anderson has
pointed out, "the government’s very success in using the polls to
serve its purposes created the first serious divisions in the 1965
coalition, as well as foreclosing the possibility that parliamentary
institutions" would broaden the coalition base by incorporating new
elements into it. "For by 1971, Suharto's policies were beginning to
create grievances as well as satisfaction, but the engineering of the
elections—which were intended to demonstrate support for the Suharto
regime—was such that grievances would find neither expression nor
resolution in the bodies they created.15
The former defense minister, General A. H. Nasution, who
watched these developments from the parliamentary sidelines, has pro-
vided an illustration of the sort of thinking that went into the making
of the Golkar victory in 1971.
During the first election, I was still chairman of the
MPRS [Provisional MPR] and participated in some talks.
At that time, they calculated that if Golkar had 35 per-
man comes face to face with his own image everywhere he turns. No
sooner had Suharto delivered an 18,000 word report to the Congress
than Maj. Gen. Amir Murtono, chairman of the Golkar grouping and a
man who had been Suharto's aide in Yogyakarta in 1948, rose to sup-
port all that Suharto had said, endorse the Suharto-inspired GBHN
(Broad Outlines of State Policy), and nominate the president, his for-
mer commanding officer, for another five-year term. Murtono was
followed by General Surono, deputy commander of the armed forces
and spokesman for the powerful military faction in the MPR. He too
accepted the account given by Suharto and called on the Congress to
vote the president back for another term. After that came Maj. Gen.
Sunandar Prijosudarmo, the Suharto-appointed governor of East Java
and spokesman for the regional representatives' faction. His remarks
were similar to those of his colleagues. Together, these three
generals spoke for 86.1 percent of the 920-man MPR. The only dis-
cordant notes came from the two political parties, particularly the
PPP.
13.	Allan Samson, "Indonesia 1972: The Solidification of Military Con-
trol," Asian Survey 13 {February 1973): 127.
14.	Benedict Anderson, "Last Days of Indonesia's Suharto?" South-
east Asia Chronicle 63 (July-August 1978): 7.
15.	Ibid.39
cent of the vote it’s enough. It is enough to have a ma-
jority in Parliament and the MPR, because with the wide
powers of appointment they would have everything well in
hand. But then some generals within the ruling elite
were thinking more about this. You had to give the im-
pression you were a majority. So then it became more
than 35 percent. And after, more than 50 percent.
Then came the problem that you can change the Constitu-
tion if you have a two-thirds majority. It’s not necessary
because of the appointments. But then people said in
unofficial talks that they needed two-thirds of the mem-
bership. And the Minister of Home Affairs was in charge
of this and he said to the people ”80 percent.” You
know it is A.B.S. [Asal Bapak Senang—"As long as the
boss is happy"]. So if you go lower, the villages have
maybe 95 percent in some areas. And that is the whole
problem. From 35 percent to more than 50 percent, to
two-thirds and then by the people working on the project
it is becoming more than 90 percent.16
Golkar, which had entered 1971 as a largely paper entity, was not
without its attractions to many Indonesians and had come by many of
its votes honestly. Golkar, says Hindley,
represented those people who had destroyed the PKI [In-
donesian Communist Party], unseated Sukarno, and
brought about an unprecedented degree of political sta-
bility and economic improvement. In addition, the gov-
ernment was reasonably humane to all but Communists,
reasonably tolerant of and responsive to constructive crit-
icism, at least verbally concerned with the plight of Indo-
nesia's impoverished millions, and dedicated to ”25 years
of accelerated modernization and development" while safe-
guarding Indonesian-ness. And the government seemed
irremovable.
Under these circumstances, it appears that tradition-
alism brought Golkar millions of votes; traditionalism in
the sense of obeying the non-costly wishes of "the au-
thorities," in opting for what one knows, if it is not too
bad, rather than risk the unknown.17
It was also true, as Hindley noted with delicate irony, that the
government had not merely waited for its record and its promise to
attract votes; steamroller tactics had been employed to ensure that
16.	Interview with General Nasution, July 14, 1981.
17.	Hindley, "Indonesia 1971," p. 59. The first part of this state-
ment is not entirely accurate. Golkar represented some of those
people who had destroyed the PKI etc.40
nothing was left to chance. On the other hand, there had in 1971
been some reason for believing, as a number of Indonesian intellec-
tuals had in fact believed, that Golkar might develop into something
worthwhile, might become a force in its own right, not just an in-
strument in the hands of the army, a body with no more life of its
own than the various badan kerjasama (cooperation boards) that
Nasution set up in 1958-60.
By the mid-1970s, these initial hopes for Golkar had begun to
dissipate. The distinguished independents who had lent their names
to the organization had started to drift away. Golkar, having won
the election for the army leaders, had been put back on the shelf, a
lifeless instrument with no real role in the parliamentary process.
Now, as the 1977 poll drew closer, it looked very much as though the
government intended to bring Golkar out for another "organized rati-
fication" of military rule.
In theory, Suharto did not have much to worry about as the
nation approached the 1977 general election; the machinery that would
ensure his continuing dominance of the legislative branch was in
place, well oiled and incapable of failing to achieve the desired re-
sults. In 1973, the ruling group had forced nine existing political
parties to fuse into two new groupings. The four Muslim parties
which had contested the 1971 election were merged into the Partai
Persatuan Pembangunan (United Development Party or PPP), while the
five remaining Christian and nationalist groupings had been forced
under the umbrella of a new, and seriously divided, Partai Demokrasi
Indonesia (Indonesian Democratic Party or PDI). Riven by internal
dissension and with no clear identity of their own, the new groupings
were not expected to pose any significant threat to Golkar.
Through a system of appointments, made in accordance with
powers acquired from Sukarno on March 11 , 1966, and through the
Kopkamtib decree, the president and his chief lieutenants, were able
virtually to hand-pick 61 percent of the 920 members who sat in the
MPR, the body that would put its stamp on the GBHN (Broad Outlines
of State Policy) and elect a new president.18 The "election" was to
fill 360 of the 460 seats in the DPR (the other 100 were also ap-
pointed), meaning that only 39 percent of the full MPR was chosen by
direct vote.
At the same time, the executive branch had the power to
"screen" candidates for the MPR—weeding out those it deemed unsuit-
18. Of the 100 members of the DPR appointed by the president 75
represented the armed forces, whose members were not allowed to
campaign or vote; the other 25 represented Golkar. (The other 360
members were elected.) The remaining 460 seats in the full Congress
were occupied by 135 regional delegates, 118 Golkar and political
party delegates, and 207 additional government members—155 from the
armed forces and 52 from Golkar. This gave the armed forces 230
(exactly one quarter) of the 920 Congress seats, not counting the
military men who sat as regional delegates.41
able. This task was in the hands of two bodies, one headed by a
four-star general who was a member of the president's inner circle,
the other headed by Suharto himself. The first of these two bodies
was Bakin, a nominally civilian institution which was headed by Gen-
eral Yoga Sugama, a trusted Suharto associate from the Diponegoro
military region. Yoga's deputy was Ali Murtopo, another long-time
associate of the president and the man who had formerly been the
presidential assistant for political affairs. It was Ali Murtopo who
was widely credited with the intervention that had emasculated the
political parties in the late 1960s.
The other body involved, at the operational level, was Kop-
kamtib, headed by the president himself, and with Admiral Sudomo,
another member of Suharto's inner circle as its chief of staff.19 Not
surprisingly, the screening affected the two political parties more
than Golkar. At the national level, Golkar lost only 5 percent of its
nominees, while the PPP lost 16 percent and the PDI 19 percent.20
There were other constraints as well. In 1975 the government
had submitted to the DPR bills on political party organization and
election procedures. "The chief intent of both bills," says Liddle:
was to further restrict the parties' ability to compete with
Golkar. The parties' bill attempted to prevent civil ser-
vants from joining a party (but not Golkar), to limit the
parties' choice of ideological foundation to Panca Sila and
the 1945 Constitution (thereby making both parties indis-
tinguishable from Golkar, a special handicap to the Islamic
PPP), and to prohibit party organization below the level
of district (an area of roughly half-a-million people in
populous parts of Java and Sumatra, further divided ad-
ministratively into subdistricts and villages). The
general election bill was designed to maintain the leverage
of the 1971 election, when the government was able to ex-
ercise broad discretionary powers concerning campaign
rallies, the placing of polling booths in government of-
fices, the political activities of military officers, the
screening of candidates and so on.21
The government was later to compromise on the three contro-
versial provisions in the parties bill but no change was made in the
election bill. "In effect," says Liddle, "the parties at the end of
19.	Kopkamtib also had the power to screen candidates standing for
the provincial and district legislatures. Suharto resumed command of
Kopkamtib in May 1974 following the fall of General Sumitro. He held
the post until April 1978, when it was transferred to Admiral Sudomo.
20.	Liddle, "1977 Indonesian Election and New Order Legitimacy," p.
127.
21.	Ibid., p. 126-27.42
1975 seemed to be about where they had been at the beginning of the
1971 campaign.1,22
Other constraints included a provision, similar to the one in
1971, that former members of the Communist party and its mass
organizations were not permitted to take part in the elections and a
set of four campaign "don'ts" which severely curtailed the parties'
freedom to operate. These "don'ts," which were elaborated by
Admiral Sudomo on the eve of campaigning, were broadly similar to
those which governed the 1971 poll. At that time, candidates were
prohibited to reason about or discuss Pantja Sila Prin-
ciples and the 1945 Constitution, to slander, show con-
tempt or disrespect of the government or government offi-
cials, individuals, groups, organizations, or a foreign
country, or to commit any other acts/activities contrary
to the ethics/moral code of Pantja Sila Principles.23
Sudomo's four "don'ts" were: don’t intimidate your opponents; don't
offend the dignity of the government and its officials; don't disrupt
national unity; and don't criticize the policies of the government.
These rules effectively prevented any discussion of substantive issues
and provided the government with a sweeping set of headings under
which it could take action against those who threatened the outcome
of a "successful" election.
Finally, and most importantly, the government was able to count
on the loyalty of its own administrative structure—and in particular
on the Departments of Defense and Home Affairs—to ensure that the
election was a success. This gave it an infinite advantage over its
political opponents. Ostensibly, these two departments were "the
neutral organizers and safeguarders of an open electoral process."25
In practice, their resources were used in the most partisan fashion.
The ministers of defense and home affairs, who, like Yoga Sugama
and Ali Murtopo, were members of Suharto's inner circle—and who
were, as well, members of the Dewan Pembina (Control Board) of
Golkar—presided over parallel vertical structures which, reaching
down into almost every village, had an all-pervasive influence on
Indonesian political life. The government was playing with heavily
loaded dice.
The most important of these instruments of control and influ-
ence was the army's "territorial" structure, through which the ruling
group could exert political pressure at every level of society. This
was to prove crucial in 1977, just as it had in 1971. The TNI, unlike
22.	Ibid., p. 127.
23.	Quoted in Hindley, "Indonesia 1973," p. 58.
24.	Quoted in Liddle, "1977 Indonesian Election," p. 128.
25.	Anderson, "Last Days," p. 8.43
a conventional Western army, is deeply involved in sospol (social-
political) affairs. The panglima (commander) of each regional military
command (Kodam) presides over not merely a regular operational force
but a "territorial" organization which is considered of at least equal
importance. This territorial structure, which is seen in its most de-
veloped form on Java, corresponds broadly with the various tiers of
the civilian administration of the Department of Home Affairs and
forms a parallel "shadow government" which is intimately involved in
nonmilitary functions. Territorial officers are supposed to monitor
political and social developments and "prod" their civilian counterparts
where necessary. But their influence goes far beyond this. Because
it is necessary to secure military permission to travel, to organize
meetings, to deliver sermons, or to issue any publication, the terri-
torial structure has come to dominate local politics.26
Immediately under the Kodam commanders, who report directly
to the Department of Defense and Security on territorial matters, are
a number of Military Resort Commands (Korem). These generally cor-
respond to the old position of Residency in the civilian administrative
structures. One tier further down and corresponding generally with
the Kabupaten (Regency) is the Kodim (Military District Command).
At another level below this and roughly equivalent to the Kecamatan
(subdistrict) is the Koramil (Military Rayon Command). Below the
Koramil is the Babinsa (Bintara Pembina Desa), an NCO, who,
together with two or three men, represents the army at the desa
(village) level.
In the normal course of events, the tour of duty of an up-and-
coming officer will be arranged so that he "zig-zags" up through the
system, moving between operational and territorial responsibilities.
And in an army which places so much emphasis on the territorial ap-
paratus, there has been a natural tendency to see territorial assign-
ments as "more senior" and more desirable than troop commands.
Troop units are involved in training and little else; the territorial
system is what makes the country run. Thus it is that the best bat-
talion commanders tend to be appointed as Kodim commanders. Like-
26. Hamish McDonald, Suharto's Indonesia (Melbourne: Fontana/
Collins, 1980), p. 94. In accordance with its "Territorial Warfare"
doctrine, which grew out of its guerrilla experience during the revo-
lution, the army seeks to "integrate itself with the people." See
Crouch, Army and Politics, p. 222.
The size of the regular force unit varies from one Kodam to an-
other. Each of the three large Java commands (Siliwangi,
Diponegoro, and Brawijaya) have three brigades at their disposal,
each of about 2,500 men. The smallest Kodam (Kodam XV/Pattimura
in Maluku) has only one battalion, or about 600-700 men. This oper-
ational force can venture anywhere in the province; it can also be
used outside the Kodam at the discretion of the commander of the
armed forces. As and where necessary, the territorial force would
assist the operational force with intelligence and support.44
wise, the best brigade commanders tend to become Korem commanders.
(A Kodim commander, having performed his tasks satisfactorily, may
be rewarded with an appointment as chief of staff of a brigade. A
Korem commander who succeeds in his appointment may be assigned,
if he is a graduate of both Akabri [Military Academy] and Seskoad,
as chief of staff to a Kodam outside Java. Alternatively, he may be
assigned to staff officer duties, serving in either a Kowilhan [Re-
gional Defense Command] or as a head of section [kepaia bagian} to
one of the six assistants to the army chief of staff.) Assignments
given to officers who have completed the course at Seskoad reflect
the preeminent position of the territorial apparatus. While the top
ten or twelve graduates may be selected by the intelligence service to
serve as military attaches, those immediately below them are generally
given Korem commands. "The challenge for the individuals at Ses-
koad was to get enough brownie points to get a territorial assign-
ment," one foreign student observed.27 "There is a tendency to se-
lect the best for territorial. The reaction of people when they heard
they had been posted to a territorial slot was great pleasure." (As
part of their course work, mid-career officers at Seskoad study the
mounting of a territorial intelligence exercise during the run-up to a
general election. They decide the groups to target and what sort of
psychological or intelligence operations should be launched against
them. This is known as Opsgalangan, or "Guidance Operations."28
27.	Confidential communication, November 9, 1981. At the time of
the Semarang congress of the PNI in April 1970, Kodim commanders in
East Java summoned PNI branch delegates before their departure and
demanded assurances that they would vote for Hadisubeno, Ali
Murtopo's preferred candidate for party general chairman. See Ken
Ward, The 1971 Election in Indonesia: an East Java Case Study (Mel-
bourne: Monash University Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, 1974),
p. 145.
Another attraction of a territorial assignment is that officers in
this stream have control over quite substantial sums of money.
Korem, Kodim, and Koramil commanders are charged with the task of
raising funds from the community. Ostensibly, money is raised to
cover such things as "security operations" to secure the elections or
to celebrate some important event, be it Youth Day, Independence
Day, or the anniversary of the local Kodam. In practice, there is
virtually no accounting for the sums raised or the purposes for which
they are spent; large amounts are known to have been used "improp-
erly." These forced levies, in which a small businessman might be
put down for a "contribution" of Rp 50,000 (the equivalent, perhaps,
of a month’s income) are highly unpopular and contribute significantly
to ABRI’s bad name in society.
28.	A contraction of the words Operas/ Galangan. There is an obvi-
ous "contradiction" between this aspect of the Seskoad course work
and the emphasis that is placed in other courses on ABRI’s role as an
upholder of the 1945 Constitution.45
Invariably in these exercises, the political parties are listed as
targets, with special attention being paid to which members of these
groups are of particular interest. The '’targets1' also include informal
leaders in the community—a man who stands up and commands atten-
tion at the local mosque, a student leader, and so on.)
Under this system, there is an equation, even at the village
level, between the army territorial structure and the civilian adminis-
tration. And the interaction between military officers in the terri-
torial organization and the officials in the Home Affairs hierarchy is
very close. This is particularly so when the governor, bupoti (re-
gent), camat (subdistrict officer), or lurah (village head) is an ABRI
man serving in a kekaryaan (nonmilitary) capacity. Thus a military
man serving as a provincial governor will keep in close touch with the
local military commander (Panglima Kodam, or Pangdam). A bupati
will coordinate his programs with the local Kodim commander
(Kommandan Kodim, or Dandim). In some cases, the distinction be-
tween the two hierarchies becomes completely blurred, as is the case
where a Kodim commander is moved across, prior to his retirement, to
become bupati in the area where he has already been serving, or a
sergeant who has served as Babinsa is moved across to become lurah
in the same village.
This structure gives the army leaders great capacity to influ-
ence the outcome of a general election; with army men resident in al-
most every village, most village heads find it prudent to follow their
suggestions. And that, in most cases, is all that is needed; if the
village head comes out for Golkar, he can often deliver the whole vil-
lage to the ruling group. The "suggestions" of the local military of-
ficials are, of course, backed up by the "suggestions" and induce-
ments of the civilian officials. Thus, a village head who proves mal-
leable can be reasonably certain that development funds will continue
to be allotted to his area. One who proves obstinate might find that
such funds rapidly dry up.
While the territorial structure allowed the regional military com-
mander to monitor political and social developments in his bailiwick,
his four other hats tended to reinforce a bias in favor of the ruling
"functional group," at the same time providing him with extensive an-
cillary powers to deal with those who might upset the outcome of the
poll. Prior to 1978, the military commander was nearly always chair-
man of Golkar's Dewan Pembina Daerah (Regional Control Board), and
also chairman of the Dewan Kekaryaan Daerah (Regional Functional
Affairs Board). In this latter capacity, he was able to select those
officers and NCOs who would serve as bupati, camat, and lurah in
his domain—officials who played a crucial part in Golkar strategy and
were themselves part of the Golkar "team." (Although in theory the
Department of Home Affairs had the final say on these appointments,
recommendations "from below" were almost always approved.) In his
further capacity as chairman of the Muspida (Provincial Leadership
Council), the military commander had all manner of back-up powers,
and could, if necessary, issue instructions to the governor, the46
Table II. Parallel Regional Bureaucracies and Their Interaction
Department of Defense
and Security
Department of Home
Affairs
Province
Kodam Commander-----------> Governor6
Chief of Staff5 6
A
Operational
T erritorial
Korem
^~7
(Resident)
Brigade
Seskoad
1.	Recent Akabri (Military Academy) graduates may be appointed,
under plans now being discussed, as Koramil commanders.
2.	The best battalion commanders generally become Kodim com-
manders.
3.	Older Kodim commanders may be appointed bupati prior to retire-
ment.
4.	The best brigade commanders generally become Korem com-
manders.
5.	An outstanding Korem commander may be appointed chief of staff
to a Kodam outside Java, or become staff officer in Army Headquar-
ters if he is a graduate of both Akabri and Seskoad. In some cases,
the chief of staff of a Kodam may be given command of his "own" or
some other Kodam.
6.	Nineteen of Indonesia's twenty-seven governors are military men.
NOTE: The above table is diagrammatic in the sense that an officer
would not spend his entire career in one area but would have tours
of duty in various Kodams.47
police chief, and the public prosecutor. In most cases this was un-
necessary, for these officials were themselves members of the armed
forces or the civil service (and thus Golkar) and so answerable to
superiors who were Suharto loyalists. Finally and most importantly,
in his capacity as Laksusda (Special Executor) of Kopkamtib, the
Kodam commander had the power to arrest or detain anyone who might
threaten the "success” of the general election.
The Department of Home Affairs—the other great bastion of
Suharto's rule—was of equal importance in any Golkar victory. Pre-
sided over by the blunt-speaking Amir Machmud and with an influence
which extended down to virtually the village level, it was dominated
by military men serving in kekaryaan roles. The minister was a gen-
eral and so too were all but one of his seven principal assistants—the
secretary general, the inspector general, and four of the five direc-
tors general. This gave the military 89 percent of the top slots in
Home Affairs (up from 29 percent in 1966 and 71 percent in 1971),
well above the percentage in any other department outside Hankam
and an indication of the importance with which the ministry's work
was viewed.29 In 1977, twenty-one of the twenty-seven—that is, 78
percent—of provincial governors were army men. 0 In Java, four of
the five provinces or special territories had military governors, the
one exception being the Special Territory of Yogyakarta. According
to Nasution, there were three kinds of governors—"Suharto gov-
ernors, Amir Machmud governors, and Hankam governors." The most
important were the governors appointed at the behest of the presi-
dent. "The Java governors," Nasution said, "are all Suharto gov-
ernors."31 In May 1977, the month of the general election, more than
half (155) of Indonesia's 294 bupati and mayors were ABRI men.32 In
29.	For a detailed study of military penetration of the upper levels
of Indonesia's central government bureaucracy, see John A.
MacDougall, "Patterns of Military Control in the Indonesian Higher
Central Bureaucracy," Indonesia 33 (April 1982): 89-121.
30.	In January 1978, following a reshuffle which involved the ap-
pointment of eight new governors, there were nineteen ABRI and
eight civilian governors. The two provinces that went from military
to civilian governorships were Southeast Sulawesi and Bali.
31.	Interview with General Nasution, March 2, 1981.
32.	See "Jumiah Anggota ABRI Yang Ditempatkan diluar Bidang
Hankam/ABRI" in "Pejuang dan Prajurit: Konsepsi dan Implementasi
Dwi Fungsi ABRI," ed. Nugroho Notosusanto (Jakarta: Sinar
Harapan, n.d.) [the so-called "Hankam paper"], pp. 378-79. This
figure had fluctuated over the years. By 1969 the number of military
bupati and mayors had risen to 147 out of 271 throughout Indonesia,
or 54 percent. After the 1971 elections the proportion reached about
two-thirds. (See Crouch, Army and Politics, p. 244.) In November
1983, approximately 45 percent of the nation's bupati were karyawan
ABRI. (Minister of home affairs, Gen. Supardjo Rustam, private
communication, November 16, 1983.)48
many cases, the Sekwilda (Regency Secretary) was also an ABRI man,
particularly if the bupati was a civilian. In Java, according to an
estimate by a former panglima, half of the lurah were or had been
military men.33
During the 1977 election campaign, the Golkar chairman, Maj.
Cen. Amir Murtono, was to make great play of the fact that all of the
governors, bupati, and camat were on the Golkar team, to the general
amusement of those attending his rallies and the mild embarrassment
of those whose ostensible neutrality was so damagingly compromised.31*
And if there was some doubt about the commitment of the lurah to
Golkar in 1977, they were to come under increasing pressure after
the passage of the government's Draft Bill on Village Administration
in October 1979. Under that legislation, the bupati was given au-
thority to appoint the village secretary after consultations with the
village head and the camat. The camat, in turn, was given the
authority to appoint the heads of various branches of the village gov-
ernment (including, for example, the officials in charge of the main-
tenance of village roads, irrigation, and other communal projects)
after consultation with the village head. The addition of this new
level of officialdom, it was estimated, would create an additional
500,000 village officials. Although the ostensible aim was greater ef-
ficiency, many saw the law as an attempt to bring Indonesia's 62,875
villages more directly under the sway of the Department of Home
Affairs, and feared that the government would use this leverage for
partisan political purposes in future elections.35
In October 1979,	65 of the 132 bupati and mayors in the
Kowilhan II region (Java, Madura, and Nusa Tenggara) were ABRI
men. See statement of Brig. Gen. Purwosasmito, chief of staff of
nonmilitary affairs of Kowilhan II, in Sinar Harapan, October 17,
1979.
33.	This estimate was given by Lt. Gen. Dharsono in an interview
on November 12, 1981.
34.	To reinforce his message that Golkar was the party of power and
patronage, Amir Murtono, at numerous rallies during the 1977 cam-
paign, listed the names of prominent leaders connected with the func-
tional group. "Bapak Presiden Suharto" was the "Pembina Utama"
(Chief Controler) of Golkar, he stressed. "Sri Sultan" (Vice Presi-
dent Sultan Hamengku Buwono IX) was also Golkar. "Mendagri [In-
terior Minister]?," he would ask rhetorically, and then answer:
"Golkar!" And so it went on. "Menteri Pasar [a slang expression
for Trade Minister]?" "Golkar!" "(Menteri Widjojo [the Minister of
State for the Economy]?" "Golkar!" In Bali, this not-so-subtle re-
minder that Golkar and the government were virtually one and the
same was taken a step further. Murtono, standing before a crowd of
perhaps 80,000 people, asked who the camat were for. Predictably
enough, the crowd roared back: "Golkar!" The pedanda [high
priests]?" "Golkar!" the crowd answered, greatly enjoying the joke.
35.	Confidential communication, 1979.49
In practice, it would have been unrealistic to expect the De-
partments of Defense and Home Affairs to remain above the political
fray. Not only were the departmental heads—not to mention all civil
servants—personally committed to a Golkar victory, the functional
group had in fact been constructed largely from these two
bureaucracies. At the centra, level, Golkar was dominated by
Suharto and his Cose military associates. In 1977, the president was
the Chief Controller (Pembina Utama) of Golkar, with the power to
select the other members of the Control Board (Dewan Pembina), the
decision-making body of the organization. The minister of defense,
General Maraden Panggabean, was the chairman of the Dewan Pembina
and the minister of home affairs, General Amir Machmud, was shown
in functional group documents at the head of the list of ordinary
members. Other members included Lt. Gen. Darjatmo, the chief of
staff for functional affairs, Lt. Gen. Ali Murtopo, Lt. Gen.
Sudharmono and Maj. Gen. Amir Murtono. The secretary general of
the DPP was Brig. Gen. Sapardjo. The seventeen-man Centra,
Executive Board (Dewan Pimpinan Pusat) was likewise dominated by
members of the ruling group. The genera, chairman, Maj. Gen. Amir
Murtono, had served as Suharto's aide in Yogyakarta in 1948 and was
known to carry out al, instructions to the letter. Four of the eleven
secretaries (Jusuf Wanandi, Cosmas Batubara, Pitut Suharto, and
David Napitupulu) were members of the Ali Murtopo group. The
second deputy chairman (and one of the most active members of the
DPP), Maj. Gen. A. E. Manihuruk, was head of the State Personnel
Administration Board (Badan Administrasi Kepegawaian Negara,
BAKN), a government position which gave him control over al, civil
service promotions and pensions. (This office came directly under
Lt. Gen. Sudharmono and the State Secretariat.)
Military dominance of Golkar was equally apparent at the pro-
vincial level. There were in the mid-1970s twenty-six Regional Con-
trol Boards (Dewan Pembina Daerah—Tingkat 1, or Wanbintu), re-
sponsible for policy making at the province level. As we have seen,
the panglima were, almost without exception, the chairmen of the
Wanbintu. Moreover, most of the members were themselves military
men. (The members of the Muspida, which, as we have seen, was it-
self dominated by military officers, were members of the Wanbintu,
along with other tokoh-tokoh daerah [prominent local figures], includ-
ing perhaps a rector and one or two civilian intellectuals.) Golkar
also had twenty-six Regional Executive Boards (Dewan Pengurus
Daerah, or Wanbinda) and these bodies, which were responsible for
the execution of policy, were also dominated at this time by active
military officers. The chairman of the executive board was, in every
case, an active officer appointed by the chief of staff for functional
affairs (Kaskar). In theory, the chairman was answerable to the
Kaskar and the Golkar Centra, Executive Board (DPP) in Jakarta. In
practice, he was answerable to the local military commander (in the
latter's capacity as chairman of the regional supervisory board of
Golkar), via the assistant VI (Territorial Affairs) of the Kodam.
This left the provincial Golkar policy-making and policy-executing50
boards very much under the sway of the military and administrative
hierarchies. Shortly before the 1977 elections, it is true, the gov-
ernment announced that active officers would not be permitted to take
part in any election activities. This, however, was no setback for
Golkar. Most of the key officers in the functional group were at, or
close to, retirement age and were able to retire and continue their
activities on behalf of Golkar with barely any interruption to their
schedules. Mingling with members of the local Golkar organs during
the 1977 election campaign, one might just as well have been attend-
ing a meeting of the Muspida or the governor's council, so strong was
the sense that Golkar in the provinces was staffed by, and was an
extension of, the ruling military and civilian elite. Golkar gave every
sign of being the party of the government, with few, if any, roots in
society.
What this all meant was that a situation had been created in
which the president's key assistants—all of whom were high-ranking
military officers—enjoyed extraordinary power to influence the out-
come of any election. These powers were not separate and diffuse
but overlapping and mutually reinforcing. Moreover, because no
clear-cut distinction was ever made between the actions taken by
senior officials in their separate ministerial and functional group
capacities—there was, in fact, some valiant obscurantism on this
point—an election result could provide no more than a very qualified
indication of the degree of support for the ruling group.
Given this capacity to influence the outcome of a general elec-
tion, it might be supposed that the government could have afforded,
in the period before the 1977 poll, to rest easy. This was not the
case. The Suharto group, when it had "simplified" the party system
in 1973, had assumed that the four Muslim parties, so different in
their outlook and objectives, so disputatious and faction-ridden,
would dissipate their energies in internal squabbling and thus neu-
tralize one another. As Anderson has observed:
The government's political strategists, most notably Gen-
eral Ali Murtopo, had calculated that the forced fusion of
parties traditionally in rivalry with one another and with
well-established popular identities would fatally weaken
them, both internally and externally. It was expected
that the rivalries would continue and even intensify as
the different parties' leaderships struggled for pre-
eminence in the new entities, thereby paralyzing their
electoral energies and sapping their morale and organiza-
tional coherence. ... In fact, the government's strategy
worked perfectly in the case of the Indonesian Democracy
Party. Without a coherent image or program and rent by
internal incompatibilities it achieved no more than 8.6
percent of the vote. In the case of the PPP, however,
the strategy was an almost complete failure.36
36. Anderson, "Last Days," pp. 13-14.51
That may overstate the case somewhat. The leaders of the var-
ious factions in the PPP had not, by the mid-1970s, been able to
compose their more functional differences. Nevertheless, they had
recognized—and made the most of—the obvious electoral benefits to be
reaped by campaigning under the one Islamic banner.
As the nation approached the run-up to the 1977 general elec-
tion, the government was in the invidious position of having to keep
the PDl from being run off the road. More serious still, it had to
come to terms with the fact that the Islamic political grouping had
emerged as the main opposition group in society, largely as a result
of the government’s tactical blunder in fusing the various Islamic
groups into one stream. This was to make electioneering particularly
difficult. The government, having brought these disparate groups
under one Islamic umbrella, had to counter a political party which had
Islam as its base without being seen to attack Islam itself. And the
Muslims, though rent by internal rivalries, had it within their power
to put up a very tough fight. The PPP had forced the government
to back down over the controversial Marriage Bill in 1973 and was to
confirm many of the ruling group's worst fears when, in early 1978,
it walked out of the MPR over one issue and forced a vote, the first
in that body in almost twenty years, over four other controversial
issues.
By the mid-1970s there were indications that the government,
for all its power to command the support of the largely appointive
MPR, might face a serious upset at the polls, with the Islamic party
cutting deeply into the Golkar vote. An increase in the Muslim vote
at the expense of Golkar would in no way have threatened Suharto's
hold over the Parliament nor affected his reelection for a third
five-year term in 1978. However, it would have been viewed—both in
the Palace and outside—as a loss of face for the ruling group and its
powers to command the forces of harmony.
In view of this, some of Suharto's political opponents in the
PPP have suggested, the government took steps to add yet another
weapon to the military's already significant armory. The main opposi-
tion to Golkar was coming from the Muslim party, the government
thinking allegedly ran. Therefore, steps should be taken to under-
mine the party by depicting it as connected in some unstated way
with political extremism in general and the dream of an Islamic state
in particular. This, it is alleged in Muslim circles, is what lay be-
hind the preelection revelations of an antigovernment conspiracy call-
ing itself the Komando Jihad (Holy War Command). Events were to
show that the Komando Jihad leaders were connected with Ali
Murtopo—although not, he would allege, in the way people thought—
and in the view of many Indonesians there was little doubt that the
Komando Jihad was an instrument fashioned by Murtopo with the spe-
cific aim of putting Islam on the defensive.
And by the mid-1970s too popular disenchantment with Golkar,
meant that it was now seen as a hollow shell, as Jusuf Wanandi, a
Murtopo strategist, was ready to concede following the 1977 poll:52
We simply can't go on like this. Golkar has been directed
too much from the top. It looks just like a government
department—the Social Participation Department. What we
need is a real people's movement, growing from the
grassroots. There must be a new leadership, one that
enjoys a real status with the people.37
The role of the government had been so overwhelming, Wanandi
complained, that Golkar had had to take a back seat. The political
parties had been given "considerable freedom" to develop, but Golkar
had been kept in the background. The answer was for the functional
group to be given a greater degree of autonomy. "We must become a
strong party with grassroots support," Wanandi declared, "or we will
have no chance in the 1982 election"38
To some extent, that had become a familiar refrain of the
Murtopo group, a reflection of their long-thwarted aim to build Golkar
into a mass party that would provide Ali Murtopo with the indepen-
dent power base he had always lacked. Even so, there was genuine
room for official concern that Golkar was no more than a hollow shell.
Now, in the mid-1970s, the government was to receive independent
confirmation of the fact that Golkar might not fare as well as was
hoped in a relatively free contest with the PPP.
37.	Jusuf Wanandi (Liem Bian Kie), May 1977. Suharto had been
careful not to allow Golkar to fall under the sway of any one group,
and the Golkar leadership reflected a balance between key power
groups. To some extent, Wanandi's remarks may have been due to
the frustration of the Ali group to gain sufficient leverage over
Golkar to shape the organization to their own ends. However, his
feeling that Golkar could not go on indefinitely in the same fashion
seemed to be genuinely held.
38.	Ibid.CHAPTER THREE
MOUNTING INTRAMILITARY TENSIONS
. .	. the only national property that is still whole
and unchanging notwithstanding all sorts of chal-
lenges and changes is the . . . Indonesian National
Army.
—General Sudirman, August 19491
In 1972, President Suharto gave the late Lt. Gen. M. R. Kar-
takusuma, the secretary general of the National Defense and Security
Council (Dewan Pertahanan Keamanan Nasional, or Dewan Hankamnas)2
the task of gathering materials for the GBHN (Broad Outlines of State
Policy), which was to be put before the MPR in 1978. To do this,
Kartakusuma and his associates traveled widely and held hearings
with various organizations, including the Indonesian Ulama Council
(Majelis Ulama Indonesia, MUI), the teaching staff at a number of
universities, and provincial and local leaders. These visits to the
provinces revealed widespread dissatisfaction with the government in
general and with the military in particular. Not long before the
1.	The late General Sudirman, Commander-in-Chief of the Indonesian
Armed Forces during the revolution, used this phrase in a letter
which he wrote (but was persuaded not to send) to President Sukarno
in August 1949. (The letter is published in A. H. Nasution, Sekitar
Perang Kemerdekaan Indonesia Vol. 2, Dip/omasi atau Bertempur
[Bandung: Disjarah-AD, 1977], pp. 349-50.) In the years since
1953, when Nasution first made the Sudirman letter public in his book
TNI, it has become common for ABRI personalities to quote Sudirman's
words about ABRI being hak milik nasional (national property) as a
declaration of the Father of the TNI.
2.	The Dewan Hankamnas (National Defense and Security Council)
was established on August 1 , 1970, to assist the president determine
policies in the field of national defense and security. Chaired by the
president, the council consisted of seven members, including the vice
president and five key ministers; Lt. Gen. Kartakusuma, the first
secretary general of the council, was installed in November 1970. As
originally conceived, the Dewan Hankamnas was to be a high-level
body that would, amongst other things, prepare the draft CBHN for
the MPR. It is said that in setting up the body, the government
aimed, quite consciously, at bridging the civilian-military gap, by
bringing together people from both fields.
5354
anti-Japanese and antigovernment Malari riots of January 1974, Dr.
Ruslan Abdulgani and another member of the Dewan Hankamnas team
attended a performance of a W. S. Rendra play in Yogyakarta. The
audience, which had braved the rain at an open-air theater, appeared
to be "totally anti-Golkar and antimilitary."3 4 In Jombang, a
staunchly Muslim center in East Java, members of the Kartakusuma
team were surrounded by a hostile throng of students who were
equally anti-Golkar and antimilitary. The same sentiments were evi-
dent in Malang on the day before Malari. Everywhere, said Ruslan
Abdulgani, there seemed to be "opposition to the military establish-
ment, to the dictatorship of the bureaucracy, and to the manipulation
of so many things."1* (At Tanjung Karang in South Sumatra, local
businessmen jumped to the conclusion that, if members of the "suku
Jakarta" [Jakarta tribe, or ruling elite] were in town, it must be be-
cause they had inside knowledge about a new development project and
wanted to buy up land in the vicinity of the project, a practice iden-
tified in their minds with military men and civilian officials from the
capital; hoping to participate in the anticipated windfall, they badg-
ered the visitors night and day.)
It is not known what Kartakusuma reported to the president
after these visits.5 However, the Dewan Hankamnas secretary gen-
eral was then given the additional task of making an informal evalua-
tion of the likely outcome of the 1977 general election, looking partic-
ularly at the prospects for Golkar. The findings, which were pre-
sented in 1974 or 1975, could not have been especially pleasing to
Suharto. According to the Dewan Hankamnas team, Golkar would be
lucky to get 50 percent of the vote in the forthcoming elections and
would only get about 45 percent if the contest was completely fair and
above board.6 According to General Nasution, certain members of the
Kartakusuma group were of the opinion that it would be difficult for
Golkar to win a clear-cut mandate in the elections in the absence of a
"special situation."7 This opinion appears to have been shared by a
3.	Interview with Ruslan Abdulgani, March 14, 1982.
4.	Ibid.
5.	Interviews with General Nasution, May 10-11 , 1979, and June 23,
1980, and with Ruslan Abdulgani, March 24, 1982. Although Nasution
does not know exactly what Kartakusuma reported to the president,
he says he was told of the overall conclusions of the report by former
officers who were at that time assigned to Kartakusuma. Nasution,
like many other prominent retired officers, received regular and de-
tailed information about contemporary events from former subordi-
nates.
6.	Ruslan Abdulgani interview, March 14, 1982.
7.	Interview with General Nasution, July 24, 1981 . Certain members
of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the
"think-tank" set up by Maj. Gen. Ali Murtopo in 1971, have sug-
gested that the Kartakusuma tour of the provinces was really no more55
good many others. Pepabri, the association of ex-servicemen, had
taken similar—albeit informal and less comprehensive—soundings and
come to virtually the same conclusion.8 General Sumitro, the former
commander of Kopkamtib, felt the same way, having come face to face
with popular disenchantment with the regime during a tour of univer-
sity campuses late in 1973.
It was against this background, many retired officers believe,
that the ruling group decided it would have to create a "special situ-
than a "junket," a not particularly taxing assignment for an aging
general who had been put out to grass. These sources speak dispar-
agingly of Kartakusuma in his declining years and dismiss the conten-
tion that his opinions counted for anything. Interview with Jusuf
Wanandi [Liem Bian Kie] and Harry Tjan Silalahi, July 22,	1981.
While statements like this clearly reflect the anti-Dewan Hankamnas
bias of those at CSIS, the observations are not without some founda-
tion. On the other hand, there were important members of the Kar-
takusuma group, in particular Ruslan Abdulgani and the late Oejeng
Suwargana, who did take detailed political soundings in the regions.
Interviews with Ruslan Abdulgani (March 24,	1982) and General
Nasution (July 24, 1981). Nasution had had a long association with
both Kartakusuma and Oejeng Suwargana and these two men were
themselves close. Oejeng Suwargana had been one of Nasution's clos-
est friends at the Teachers Training School in Bandung in the years
1935-38, and it was mainly because of Nasution's influence that Oejeng
joined the Royal Military Academy's Reserve Officers' Training Course
in 1941. (See Susan M. McKemmish, "A Political Biography of General
A. H. Nasution" [MA thesis, Monash University, 1976], p. 14.)
Nasution had joined the academy a year earlier. In the late 1950s,
Nasution sent Oejeng Suwargana to the Netherlands to hold informal
meetings with the Dutch as part of an Indonesian effort to sound out
the possibilities of a peaceful solution to the West Irian dispute.
(Ibid., p. 214.) In these efforts, Oejeng Suwargana worked closely
with several Indonesian military attaches in Western Europe, among
them Kartakusuma who was stationed in Paris. (Oejeng was also
widely regarded as Nasution's contact with the CIA.) In the late
1970s, Oejeng Suwargana was a member, as was Nasution, of the
Yayasan Lembaga Kesadaran Berkonstitusi (Foundation for the Insti-
tute of Constitutional Awareness). Nasution had been especially close
to Kartakusuma when the two men were officer cadets in Bandung in
1940. In 1945, when Nasution was chief of staff of the TKR for West
Java, Kartakusuma was a member of his staff. According to Nasu-
tion, Kartakusuma's role in the 1975-77 provincial visits was mainly of
a "protocol" nature; however, Oejeng Suwargana was present on each
of Kartakusuma's trips around the country and participated "very
actively." (Interview, July 24, 1981 .) This is confirmed by Ruslan
Abdulgani.
8. Ibid. General Nasution had been told of this by Lt. Gen.
Suprayogi and Admiral Nazir, both of whom were members of the cen-
tral administration of Pepabri.56
ation." The "issue" that it came up with, they say, was the security
threat allegedly posed by the Komando Jihad. There is, of course,
no easy way of establishing whether or not the Komando Jihad was a
product of the government's own making. But the timing of the an-
nouncement—the commander of Koptamtib, Admiral Sudomo, revealed
details of the alleged conspiracy a few weeks before the election cam-
paign on February 14, 1977—and a general sense of cynicism engen-
dered by earlier "black operations" mounted by the various intelli-
gence agencies gave rise to widespread suspicion. As Liddle has
noted, Sudomo stated explicitly that there was no connection between
the Komando Jihad and the PPP. But party leaders were certain the
move was designed to provide Kopkamtib "with a ready excuse to ar-
rest any Islamic politician not to its liking and more broadly to remind
political Muslims of the armed forces' view of them as fanatical propo-
nents of an Islamic state."9
Those familiar with the Indonesian intelligence services and the
philosophy of the group around Suharto believe it is quite possible
that the Komando Jihad movement was indeed an electoral ploy and
little else. According to the former head of Bakin, Lt. Gen. Sutopo
Juwono, there were "certain people" who were always thinking along
these lines.
I don't know if the government was behind the Komando
Jihad; I was not here. But if you talk about the possi-
bility, thinking like that, it is possible. So create the
problem, a special issue, something like that. . . . This
is not always true, of course. It's possible but not al-
ways true. But somebody is thinking about such things
like that. The reason is simple. Even in the intelligence
in my period there were two streams. One group said
that if we talk about Pancasila, for instance, or about the
Constitution we have also to act accordingly. Otherwise
we can't talk about the Constitution. But another group
of the intelligence is saying that we are still developing
so nobody can give an assurance that if we act like this
we will win. So I think that winning is the first aim of
this group. And the other group is more or less saying
that morality is more important than winning. "Yes, we
have to win, but according to the rules, according to
moral values." But this group is not. So from this
group it is possible that we had better create a special
9. Liddle, "1977 Indonesian Election," p. 128. Sudomo always took
pains to emphasize that the plot was in no way connected with Mur-
topo, almost to the point of protesting too much. In March 1981,
while setting out the background to unrest in Jember, East Java,
Sudomo said that Muslim MPs might choose to suggest that the unrest
had been organized by the government "like in that case of the
Komando Jihad. We are accused of that. It's nothing to do with Ali
Murtopo." Interview with Admiral Sudomo, March 3, 1981.57
issue. But I can say for sure that I am at the time be-
longing to this second group. And, you know, in 1969, I
think, I created an intelligence doctrine for Indonesia
based on moral values. And it's very strong. I think
it's still existing and is actually still valid but I don't
know whether or not it's used in practice.10
This doctrine had been designed to cover all the activities of
Bakin. But there had been another stream.
Ali Murtopo is belonging to this group. So, for instance,
you talk about Komando Jihad. It's not a new issue.
From the beginning on he has this opinion. I had to stop
that at the time. He had the opinion that we must create
issues. He said, "One time we will have to use this" and
so on and on. Let's say it's always in his mind. I tried
to stop him. But I can't stop that because he's always
going to the president. He had his own Opsus [Operasi
Chusus, Special Operations section].* 11
Many in Indonesia share this suspicion, and take the view that
the Komando Jihad was an operation mounted by Murtopo to discredit
the Muslims. Former prime minister Mohammad Natsir, a prominent
Muslim leader, claimed in 1978 that Ismail Pranoto, a Komando Jihad
leader who was sentenced to life imprisonment in September 1979, was
"an agent provocateur run by Ali Murtopo."12 People at the grass-
roots were dissatisfied with conditions, Natsir argued, and were
easily led. Murtopo's agents had planted rumors about the Communist
comeback and had promised former Darul Islam activists weapons to
fight the leftist "threat." The leaders of the Komando Jihad—Ateng
Jailani, Abu Darda (a son of S. M. Kartosuwirjo, the original Darul
Islam leader), Danu Subroto, Zainal Abidin, Ismail Pranoto, and
Kadar Salihat—were former Darul Islam leaders who were "now in the
control of Ali Murtopo and his group. . . . From the start they got
help from the Ali Murtopo group, not from the military as a whole.
That is his special hobby. Even the West Java commander, [Maj.
Gen.] Himawan [Sutanto], knows it is a fabrication, but no one can
say it. He knows it. He was furious that everything is blamed on
[West Java] as a center of the Darul Islam."13
According to members of the Ali Murtopo group, the Komando
Jihad leaders did indeed have links with Murtopo,14 but they
10.	Interview with Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono, July 23, 1981.
11.	Ibid.
12.	Interview with Mohammad Natsir, December 12, 1978.
13.	Ibid. A number of army officers expressed an almost identical
opinion during interviews.
14.	Interview with Harry Tjan Silalahi and Jusuf Wanandi, July 22,
1981.58
"misused" this link, with the result that people had come wrongly to
suspect Ali. Murtopo, it was pointed out by his associates, had long
been a master of the unexpected. In the mid-1960s he had used for-
mer members of the 1958-61 PRRI-Permesta rebellion, most notably
Des Alwi, an Indonesian of Arabic descent, to pioneer the ending of
Konfrontasi with Malaysia. He had also been largely responsible for
the release in 1966 of prominent army officers who had taken part in
the rebellion, including Col. Maluddin Simbolon, Lt. Col. H. N. V.
Sumual, and Lt. Col. Ahmad Husein. In the same year he had helped
arrange the release from military prison of a number of Masyumi
leaders, including Natsir and former foreign minister Mohamad Roem,
both of whom had been detained by Sukarno. Although Ali had
fought the PRRI-Permesta, it was explained, he was not vindictive to-
wards his former enemies. He had an open mind and wanted to make
use of the people who were available, while at the same time giving
those people a chance to do something for the nation.15 The Ko-
mando Jihad leaders, according to this explanation, were a group of
ex-Darul Islam supporters whom Ali, in his capacity as deputy head
of Bakin, had "wanted to use." As one of the civilian intellectuals
associated with the Murtopo group put it: "Ali wanted to contact
them and give them a chance of going back to [President] Suharto.
They asked for such a chance and Pitut [Suharto, a member of
Opsus] was taking care of that."16
15.	Interview with Jusuf Wanandi, March 5, 1982. Barbara Harvey
has noted that many of the former TNI officers who returned with
Maj. (later Lt. Col.) Daniel Julius Somba's Permesta group were given
positions in "army intelligence [Bakin]" (sic), amongst other places.
In 1971-72, Somba was a lieutenant colonel on the staff of Bakin. See
Barbara S. Harvey, Permesta: Half a Rebellion (Ithaca: Cornell Mod-
ern Indonesia Project, 1977), pp. 151 and 159. Although its senior
positions are held by military figures, Bakin is in fact a civilian
agency.
16.	Harry Tjan and Jusuf Wanandi interview, July 22, 1981 . In
June 1977, Admiral Sudomo announced that 700 people had been ar-
rested in connection with the Komando Jihad movement. In reply to a
question, he said that the movement was organized in Aceh, North
Sumatra, Riau, South Sumatra, Lampung, Jakarta, West Java, Central
Java, and East Java. The movement, he said, had a "war com-
mander" and a "Messiah." Members of the movements were "sworn."
According to Sudomo, the long-term aim of the movement was to form
an Islamic state. The short-term aim was to make trouble by engag-
ing in terrorist activities against other groups and religions and by
discrediting the government. He dismissed reports in some news-
papers that the Jihad Command movement had been manufactured by
the government expressly to face the 1977 general election. At the
time of the crackdown, Sudomo said, the movement was limited to cells
or groups which were later to have been developed more widely. See
Kompas, June 8, 1977. (United States Embassy translation service,
henceforth USE.) During his trial in Surabaya, Haji Ismail Pranoto59
However, according to this version, these people "misused their
position, misused the loyalty Ali had given them, and misused Ali's
name to do things that were detrimental." When the security forces
clamped down, it is said, some of the group had insisted that they
were together "because Ali asked us." This led to rumors that Ali
had created the Komando Jihad to oppose the Muslims."17 Many Indo-
nesians, a number of prominent military officers among them, find
this "explanation" unconvincing. "It is a manufactured account," one
general insisted. "Pitut did not misuse his authority. He did exactly
what he was told to do. He was an agent provocateur seeking to fan
the flames."18 Whatever the truth about tHe Komando Jihad, the
government was clearly motivated by a desire to contain the PPP
within very narrow limits.19 In a series of special meetings, the
army leaders instructed their subordinates to throw their full weight
behind Golkar, just as in 1971.20
If the government was preparing to climb into bed with Golkar
yet again, then the policy did not enjoy the unquestioned support of
the officer corps. At the time of the 1977 general elections, there
were conflicting views within the armed forces about the TNI's proper
role in an electoral situation. Some officers, those who shared the
basically "pragmatic" outlook of the officers close to Suharto, tended
bin Suleiman, or "Hispran" as he was more commonly known, was de-
scribed as the "deputy war commander of Java-Madura." A former
Darul Islam/Tentara Islam Indonesia member from Brebes, Central
Java, he was said to have visited East Java to propagate his ideas
and find new followers. According to the prosecution, he had in-
stalled "Jihad Commands" at Bojonegoro, Tuban, Blitar, and Lamongan
and was in the process of swearing in a number of Komando Jihad
leaders at the time of his arrest on January 8, 1977. During his
trial, Hispran requested the presence of Ali Murtopo and Pitut
Suharto as defense witnesses. The request was turned down by the
trial judge. Hispran was aged 58 at the time of his arrest. See
Antara, February 1 ,	1978, Merdeka, Angkatan Bersenjata, Berito
Buana, and Kompas, April 6, 1978.
17.	Harry Tjan-Jusuf Wanandi interview.
18.	Confidential communication, March 1982.
19.	Liddle, "1977 Indonesian Election." Although the discovery of
the "plot" may have provided the government with a convenient ex-
cuse to crack down on political Islam, there was never any possibility
of Suharto losing control of the MPR; as we have seen, 61 percent of
the 920 MPR members were appointed. The reasoning may have been
that there was a danger that the PPP might eat into the 62 percent of
the popular vote secured by Golkar in 1971. This would have occa-
sioned considerable loss of face for the government.
20.	Reference was made to such instructions by Nasution in an in-
terview on July 27, 1981 . Sumitro confirmed as much in an interview
on December 12, 1981.60
to accept the necessity and desirability of taking certain steps to en-
sure a ’’successful” election and the maintenance of stability. Golkar,
in this view, was a creation of the armed forces, and it was only nat-
ural for them to lend support to the grouping. A smaller faction,
whose outlook was similar to those described earlier as being of a
more "principled” cast of mind, took the view that the support that
was being asked of ABRI was not consistent with the pure identity of
the TNI. If ABRI were to back Golkar, this group felt, its actions
would not be in accordance with the doctrines of the late General
Sudirman who had stressed that the armed forces were not the prop-
erty of any one section of society but of the nation as a whole. This
concern found what was perhaps its fullest expression amongst a num-
ber of prominent members of the teaching staff of the four service
staff and command schools in Bandung.21 But it was also present in
the thinking of officers at Lemhannas (the National Defense Institute)
and among a number of prominent retired officers; it found adherents
also within the upper echelons of the army leadership.
The Seskoad Initiative
Each of the four service staff schools included a Departemen
Juang (Struggle Department), and the teaching staff from each of
these institutions had been meeting privately since 1976 on the initia-
tive of members of the Air Force Staff and Command School (Seskoau)
to review the implementation of the military's dual role. In order to
help resolve differences of opinion on this matter, participants from
the various staff schools decided that it would be helpful if General
Nasution, the former minister of defense and the founder of the dwi-
fungsi doctrine, came to Bandung to answer questions about the
army's proper role in such a situation.
As a preliminary, an officer from the teaching staff at Seskoad
called on the former minister to advise him informally of the planned
invitation. However, before the Sesko's could send any official invi-
tation, officers within the intelligence section of the Defense Ministry,
took steps to ensure that Nasution was not invited.22 Instead, the
21.	The four staff and command schools in Bandung are: Seskoad
(Army), Seskoau (Air Force), Seskopol (Police), and at a more ad-
vanced level, the Combined Armed Forces Staff School (Seskogab).
The Seskoal (Navy) is in Jakarta.
22.	According to Nasution, this was not the first time that Hankam
intelligence had intervened in this way. During the annual meeting
between the older and younger generation of Siliwangi officers in
1977, the assistant I (Intelligence), Maj. Gen. Benny Murdani, had
turned up with members of his staff although his name had not been
on the original invitation list. The following year, the annual meeting
was canceled by the Siliwangi on instructions from Jakarta. Nasution
had already received his invitation and was preparing his speech.61
government sent the secretary general of the Department of Home Af-
fairs, Maj. Gen. R. Suprapto, to Bandung to explain what it was
doing during the election campaign. But Suprapto was unable to sat-
isfy the teaching staff or the students with his answers to the ques-
tions raised. A military bureaucrat with a somewhat narrow focus, he
could not explain the fundamental concept behind the dwifungsi; he
seemed out of his depth when asked to comment on anything but
operational or administrative aspects of the electoral process.23 The
government tried again. This time it sent Genera, Darjatmo, the chief
of staff of functional affairs, to Bandung. He also failed to satisfy
the teaching staff, being unable or unwilling to answer the sort of
questions that were asked of him. As a result, the government was
left with an unresolved problem.
In these circumstances, members of the teaching staff at the
four staff schools in Bandung went ahead on their own and put to-
gether a lengthy paper on the dual function of ABRI.2k This paper,
which ran to forty-three pages and which was completed nine months
after the election, was largely theoretical in nature and reflected
much of the thinking of Nasution, the ban on the general's visit to
Seskoad notwithstanding. There were two reasons for this. As a
former Siliwangi commander, Nasution made regular visits to Bandung
and had, on various occasions, been approached informally for his
views on the subject. Secondly, the Seskoad paper was essentially
the work of the deputy commander of Seskoad, Colonel (later Brig.
Gen.) Abdulkadir Besar, a man who had been Cose to Nasution for
many years.25 Abdulkadir was responsible for the courses on ide-
There have been no meetings of Siliwangi seniors since then. The
reason, according to one retired officer, is "because we are talking
politics." (Interview, March 23, 1982.) Early in 1978, the leadership
of Pepabri, the association of retired military personnel, sent a num-
ber of retired senior officers, including Nasution, an invitation to
discuss problems likely to be faced by the country in the future.
Some time after he had received his invitation, Nasution was sent a
letter of cancellation. He was later told, in an informal way, that the
cancellation was made at the behest of the Defense Department. At
about the same time, the former defense minister was prevented from
publishing an article which had been requested by the editors of the
magazine Purnawiraan ("Retirement"). The article contained an eval-
uation of the efforts of the New Order up to the end of 1977 and in-
cluded suggestions about possible corrections.
23.	A Western diplomat in Jakarta was fond of describing Suprapto
as "an absolute zero," adding that this was "one reason why the de-
partment (Home Affairs) does not work." Communication to author,
February 2, 1980.
24.	Confidential communication to author, May 1979.
25.	Born in Magelang, Central Java, on November 11 , 1926, Ab-
dulkadir Besar was a graduate of the Military Academy in Yogyakarta62
ology and the state constitution at Seskoad, and his paper concerned
itself largely with the areas in which there had been ''excesses11 in
the past. This paper reflected the consensus of the teaching staff
and had also been discussed by students at the various Sesko's.
The Seskoad Paper
During the first half of 1977, Abdulkadir Besar had reformu-
lated ABRI's Hankamrata (Total People's Defense) Concept, following
essentially the existing doctrine but setting it out in what he felt was
a more systematic way. He began work on the "Seskoad Paper"—a
green-covered document entitled "Dwifungsi ABR,"—in mid-1977 and
completed it in February 1978.
Written with a frequent disregard for the niceties of grammar
and weighed down with a good deal of sociological jargon, the Seskoad
paper does not always make easy reading. Nevertheless, the thrust
of the argument is clear. After a brief introduction, the paper sets
forth the notion, central to Adbulkadir's thinking, that Indonesian
cultural values are posited on the notion that every member of a
family has a responsibility for the welfare of the entire family. From
this flows the idea that an ABRI man is responsible not just for the
defense of the state but for developing, inter alia, its economic, cul-
tural, and political life. Should a member of a family experience dif—
and the Military Law Academy in Jakarta. In the early 1960s, when
Nasution was defense minister, Abdulkadir served as a lieutenant
colonel in the army's internal security department. The two men
worked together closely between 1967-72 when Nasution was chairman
of the MPRS and Abdulkadir its secretary general. In 1973, after
Nasution had issued a "White Paper" critical of the national leader-
ship, the government, unable to strike directly at him, took out its
displeasure on Abdulkadir Besar. The MPR secretary general was in-
terrogated by Kopkamtib from 8 a.m. till 5 p.m. every weekday for
four weeks. Abdulkadir was a member of the teaching staff at Ses-
koad from 1972 to 1975 and deputy commandant of the staff school
from 1976 to 1979. At that time, after seven years at Seskoad, he
was named assistant for internal political affairs to General Maraden
Panggabean, the coordinating minister for political and security af-
fairs. Although obliged by this move to give up his position as
deputy commandant of Seskoad, he continued to head the Departemen
Juang at the staff school and to lecture there. In the view of a ci-
vilian academic who lectured at Seskoad, Abdulkadir might well have
been appointed secretary of state had Nasution ever become presi-
dent. Instead, he remained a one-star officer. "Many of these
bright guys from Seskoad are still putting their views," this source
noted in an interview (July 15,	1980). However, in the political
field, Suharto had adopted the policies of the Ali Murtopo group, not
the Seskoad group. As a result, many of the Seskoad people had be-
come a focus of opposition to Suharto.63
ficulties or fail while fulfilling his function, the paper says, "the
other members [of the family] will assist [not take over]." Likewise,
should ABRI, as a member of the large Indonesian family whose par-
ticular duty it is to defend the nation, have a relative who, in imple-
menting his duty in the economic, cultural, or political field, experi-
ences difficulties or fails "then ABRI has the right to and is respon-
sible for assisting this troubled family member."^6
In a section dealing with ABRI's dwifungsi, the paper suggests
that the dual function principle does not involve "the creation of a
new system"; instead, it merely recognizes that it is legitimate for
military men to exercise the norma, constitutional rights guaranteed to
al, citizens. "In a state based on family principles a citizen who en-
ters military service does not undergo a change in status; because of
that, the principles of ’civilian supremacy' and 'civil-military relations'
are unknown and invalid."27 In the following section the paper
makes a careful analysis of the meaning of the word "function." In a
norma, management situation, it says, the word has a clear and ac-
cepted meaning. In the case of ABRI's dual function, however, the
scope of management is potentially so wide that it is necessary, in
order to ensure that the dwifungsi is kept within "its true and real
limits," to interpret the dwifungsi according to the Sapta Marga, the
seven-point pledge, "here explained as being dharma [duty]."
In a section dealing with the identity of ABRI, the paper ar-
gues that just as human personality is influenced by culture, so
ABRI's dual function is a product of Indonesian culture. Because of
that, it claims, ABRI's dual function is a cultural reality for the In-
donesian people. ABRI's personality was formed during its early
years and is expressed in the Sapta Marga. To prevent a change in
ABRI's personality, that is, a change from a Sapta Marga personality
to something else, each member of ABRI needs to recall the original,
pure personality, "that is, the personality of Sapta Marga whose im-
plementation is expressed as the dual function of ABRI." The Sapta
Marga made it clear that an ABR, man saw himself as a citizen, pa-
triot, knight, and soldier; the virtues embodied in the Sapta Marga
had been distilled from the revolutionary experience. In a section
headed "Emotional Response," the author goes on to suggest that var-
ious cases of military "intervention" in the political processes can be
understood in terms of ABRI's adherence to the principles of the
Sapta Marga. The emotional response which was expressed by the
armed forces during the revolution was manifest in the statement of
General Sudirman that "With or without the government, the TNI goes
on with the struggle." [Met of zonder pemerintah, TNI jalan terus
mempertahankan kemerdekaan.) A similar response was apparent, the
paper suggests, when army leaders urged Sukarno to dissolve the
"libera," Parliament in October 1952 and when they pushed for a re-
26.	Abdulkadir Besar, "Dwifungsi ABRI," mimeographed (Bandung
[?]: Seskoad, 1978), p. 3.
27.	Ibid., p. 30.64
turn to the 1945 Constitution in 1959. The dissolution of the PKI in
1965 and the creation of the New Order were likewise examples of a
response which had its roots in an adherence to Sapta Marga.
ABRI’s rationale was: That which is best for the people and the
state is that which is best for ABRI. In developing the theme that
an ABRI man is not merely a soldier but a citizen, patriot, knight,
and soldier, the paper accepts that this gives ABRI members a re-
sponsibility which is “broad and complex."
The section on ABRI’s credentials is unusually blunt. "We can
indeed imagine," the paper states, "the dangers [of] an armed force
participating in politics along with other social forces which are un-
armed." An armed force such as this could degenerate into a political
party that was armed, which would tend to use its weapons or the
threat of its weapons to attain its political goals. The liberal democ-
racies had avoided this danger by formulating guidelines concerning
correct civil-military relations. The danger arose, in a country with-
out such guidelines, if the armed forces possessed their own political
aims. If, on the other hand, the armed forces had no such aims the
danger would automatically disappear. "The question that arises is:
does ABRI possess its own political aims outside the political aims of
the state?" The answer, as formulated by the Seskoad paper, was
that, according to the first three marga of the Sapta Marga, ABRI
did not possess its own political aims: ABRI men were citizens who
believed in and supported Pancasila, were patriotic defenders of the
state ideology, and were warriors who defended honesty, truth, and
justice. What prevented ABRI from having its own political aims?
None other than the basic principle that had guided ABRI since
1945—that "the Constitution is the basis and politics of the army."
And this really provided the credentials of ABRI before the Indone-
sian people. Without these credentials it would be impossible for the
people of Indonesia to allow ABRI to participate in politics, impossible
that they would allow ABRI to implement its functions as a social
force. The document continued:
We must contemplate the opposite case, namely, should
ABRI at some moment go against its own credentials, that
is if the politics carried out by ABRI were no longer
those of the ’45 Constitution but the politics of a certain
group i.e.: another group towards which ABRI were sym-
pathetic, or ABRI as a group, a small group within
ABRI, then immediately ABRI would lose its philosophical
and sociological basis to carry out its function as a social
force. And if while breaching its credentials, ABRI still
carried out its functions as a social force, then these ac-
tivities would no longer be called dual function but would
change to "dwiporsi" [dual portions] ... its decline to
dwiporsi would result in plunging the state and the
people into endless suffering. Because of this, the pur-
ity of ABRI’s credentials must be guarded; to that end,65
ABRI circles must set up control mechanisms which have
authority and which are effective.28
Out of the dwifungsi concept had come nine principles that had
to be upheld in the implementation of ABRI's dual function. These
nine principles were interrelated so that, should even one principle
not be carried out, still less breached, the significance of the dwi-
fungsi would change. Such a change in significance could, in turn,
result in a situation in which ABRI's identity was no longer that of
Sapta Marga.
In introducing the first of the nine principles, the document
said that, because ABRI as an instrument of Hankam was a power in-
strument of the government (alat kekuasaan pemerintah), its position
was equivalent to that of the government; that is, it was above all
groups in the community. From this line of reasoning, it said, came
the first principle—"the politics carried out by ABRI are those of the
1945 Constitution, not the politics of a group or the politics of ABRI
as a group." In this context, the author noted that the 1945-50
Commander-in-Chief, General Sudirman, had set out three guiding
principles. The first was that "the State Constitution is the basis
and politics of the army." The second was that "the army knows no
political view except that of the state and because of this the army
will defend the state and the state’s political views." The third was
that "in defending the state and its politics the army will not compro-
mise. "
Before setting out the second principle to be upheld in imple-
menting ABRI’s dual function, the paper noted that, as ABRI had a
position in both the "political superstructure" and the "political infra-
structure," its activities in realizing its function as a social force had
to remain proportional. Were this not the case, the political system
of family principles (kekeluargaan) could become dictatorial. From
this line of reasoning came the second principle—that "in attaining its
political goals ABRI must use neither its weapons nor the threat of its
weapons; neither can it abuse its power as a participant in the politi-
cal superstructure."
The document went on to note that Indonesia possessed a demo-
cratic political system. One condition of such a system was that it
was necessary to use legitimate methods of persuasion in implementing
political activities. From this, the third principle was born—that "in
carrying out political activities ABRI must use methods of persuasion
and constitutional methods and must not resort to force." Fourthly,
the essence of ABRI's participation as a social force was its participa-
tion in defining the direction of the state. This participation could
only be implemented through the institution that gave expression to
the sovereignty of the people and in the legislative body—that is, in
the MPR and the DPR. The fifth principle was that ABRI's participa-
tion in the executive branch of government was "only carried out
28. Ibid. , p. 37.66
within the framework of stabilizing and/or dynamizing that branch.”
The principal force in politics was that of public opinion, the paper
said, and this did not manifest the sort of rigidness or hierarchy
found in the military system. From this came the sixth principle,
that ”in carrying out its political policy ABRI does so through delib-
erations between the leadership and a number of ABRI members who,
based on their experience and capabilities, are considered capable of
forming objective opinions, not opinions fashioned according to the
desires of the leadership." The seventh principle was that ABRI's
nonmilitary function must be executed in accordance with the following
notions: that authority is not based on power; that tension should be
broken without using force; of winning without defeating; and that
wealth should come not from material objects. Power, the paper went
on, always tended towards the center and tended to commit errors.
Because of this, power had to be restrained in both extent and time.
To avoid a decline in ABRI's authority in the implementation of the
dwifungsi, an eighth principle had been formulated: "Leadership is
founded on greatness of spirit and must be realized in word, atti-
tude, and action." Finally, there was the ninth principle: "So long
as a function can be carried out by another institution or individual
with good results then it should be looked after by the institution or
individual.1,29
In a section on ABRI's role as a stabilizer and dynamizer, the
Seskoad paper stressed that ABRI was above all groups in society.
If, in implementing the dwifungsi, ABRI departed from the nine prin-
ciples already alluded to, the people's recognition would be erased
and ABRI's position "will degenerate to the level of other groups in
society."
In this document, one hears closely the voice of the officers of
a principled cast of mind, a group committed above all to the notion
that ABRI's behavior should be posited on certain moral values, a
group concerned by the apparent backsliding and decline in standards
that had taken place under the New Order leadership. At the time,
the Seskoad paper was to go almost unnoticed. Before long, how-
ever, it would become the basis of an important restatement of army
principles, a restatement that brought elements of the army leadership
into a direct confrontation with Suharto and his principal lieutenants.
The Role of the Retired Officers
In the meantime, initiatives for change were coming from an-
other quarter—retired army officers who shared a growing concern
about the political directions of the Suharto government. Indonesia,
these officers felt, was in the political doldrums. The armed forces
had established a virtual stranglehold on society and there was no
sign that they were inclined to ease their grip. Such views had been
29. Ibid., pp. 38-40.67
present to some extent since the founding of the New Order. But
they came to be heard more frequently in the mid-1970s, and they
found expression at a series of keluarga or rumpun (literally,
’'family1') meetings of retired officers from the former Brawijaya,
Siliwangi, and Diponegoro divisions in 1977. Among those participat-
ing were Lt. Gen. G. P. H. Djatikusumo, Lt. Gen. R. Sudirman, Lt.
Gen. Mohammad Jasin, Maj. Gen. Subiyono, Brig. Gen. Agus Pras-
mono, and Col. Chandra Hasan from the Brawijaya; Maj. Gen. Broto-
sewoyo, Maj. Gen. Iskandar Ranuwihardjo, Maj. Gen. Munadi, Maj.
Gen. Muamil Effendy, Brig. Gen. Broto Hamidjojo, and Brig. Gen.
Sroehardojo from the Diponegoro; Lt. Gen. A. J. Mokoginta, Lt. Gen.
Sugih Arto, Lt. Gen. Kema, Idris, Maj. Gen. Achmad Sukendro,
Brig. Gen. Daan Jahja, Col. Alex Kawilarang, and Col. Sukanda
Bratamenggala from the Siliwangi. Brig. Gen. Abimanju, who had
served in each of the three big Java divisions, also took part in
these deliberations, as did Maj. Gen. Harun Sohar, a "ring in" from
South Sumatra's Sriwijaya military region.30
These were names to conjure with. Djatikusumo, a prince of
the royal court of Solo, the son of Paku Buwono X, one of the most
glamorous sultans of Solo, was a former army chief of staff who had
served as commandant of the Military Academy in Yogyakarta and of
the Staff and Command School in Bandung. Sudirman—not to be con-
fused with the late Commander-in-Chief of the same name—was a for-
mer commander of the Brawijaya (East Java) military region, a very
distinguished officer, with a good reputation, clean and capable, al-
beit somewhat straightlaced. Jasin, another former Brawijaya com-
mander, was an officer who had gone on to serve as deputy army
chief of staff. Daan Jahja and Alex Kawilarang had each served as
commander of the prestigious Siliwangi (West Java) military region.
Kemal Idris had commanded Kostrad, the army strategic reserve, and
been commander of Kowilhan IV, the unified command for East Indone-
sia. Munadi was a former governor of Central Java (1966-74), Sugih
Arto a former attorney general (1966-70). Mokoginta had been the
Sumatra interregional commander during the years 1964-67, Sukendro
the assistant for intelligence to the army chief of staff.
Many of these men had links with one another dating back to
the revolution, if not earlier; they had participated together in the
crucial early years of the struggle. The young Abimanju had been
the first adjutant to the late General Sudirman, had slept in the same
room with him for six months at one stage in 1945-46. The young
Mokoginta had been ADC to General Urip Sumohardjo, the former
30. Interview with Maj. Gen. Sukendro, March 3, 1982. Although
frequently listed as such, Djatikusumo was not in fact from the
Brawijaya, which was only formed in 1948. He had headed the Rong-
golawe division which operated in the Semarang-Tuban north coastal
area in 1945-47—which spans parts of today's Diponegoro and Brawi-
jaya territories—before going on to head the Military Academy in
Yogyakarta.68
KN IL major who, with Sudirman, provided the dominant army leader-
ship in the early days of the Republic. Although a year behind ca-
dets like Nasution, Simatupang, and Kawilarang when he was accepted
into the Royal Netherlands Military Academy in Bandung in June 1941,
Mokoginta had known Kawilarang—both were from North Sulawesi—
since that time; later he had served as Nasution’s chief of staff in
the Siliwangi division during the first Dutch attack against the Re-
public. Abimanju, the son of a low-level government official, had
known Djatikusumo and the other, East Java, Sudirman, since the
three had graduated together as company commanders at a Japa-
nese-run course in Bogor in 1943.
The meetings of the socalled "Brasildi" group—Brasildi was an
acronym derived from the names of these three Java-based divisions
—were held in the period between the general elections of May 1977
and the presidential elections of March 1978. Initially, the concern of
this group of retired officers had been theoretical in nature. How-
ever, when the government sent troops in to occupy university cam-
puses and secondary schools in early 1978 the debate assumed a new
urgency.
One difficulty was that there was no formal body through which
the views of retired "seniors" could be channeled to the army leader-
ship. In earlier years, it had generally been accepted that, if the
government were contemplating any actions touching on army matters,
it was only right and proper that it should consult not just the army
commanders but prominent retired officers as well. This, according
to Djatikusumo, had been the practice throughout the Sukarno period,
and it was something that had carried over into the early years of
the New Order.31 Thus in 1968, when General Panggabean was Pan-
gad (army commander), a group of twenty-three semiretired army
officers, all but five of them brigadier generals, were brought to-
gether in an advisory body, the Team Poleksos, ostensibly to provide
an input to the army commander on nonmilitary affairs.32 A semioffi-
31.	Interview with Lt. Gen. G. P. H. Djatikusumo, March 9, 1981.
Sukendro believed, however, that it would be more correct to say
that this was the practice during the later years of the Sukarno
period. Interview, July 11, 1981. In 1960, when Sukendro was the
officer in charge of "special duties," the army had an informal body
of this kind. In the regions there were meetings between active and
retired officers during the anniversary celebrations of the various
Kodams. This was the only formal communication between the retired
and active officers and there was generally a frank exchange of
views. Many retired officers retained considerable influence, as ac-
tive members of the armed forces were frequently their former subor-
dinates.
32.	For details about the establishment of the Team Poleksos, see
"Surat - Perintah, Nomer: Prin - 243/5/1968," signed by Gen. Pang-
gabean in his capacity as Panglima Angkatan Darat on May 27, 1968.
A copy of this document was made available to the author.69
cial body chaired by the Kaspri Pangad (chief of staff of the Personal
Secretariat of the army commander), the Team Poleksos consisted of
three subcommittees; a Kelompok Politik (Political Croup) under Maj.
Gen. Dr. Satrio, a Kelompok Ekonomi under Maj. Gen. Achmad Su-
kendro, and a Kelompok Sosial under Brig. Gen. Sujatmo.33
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Team Poleksos
was simply a convenient dumping ground for officers unwanted by the
Suharto group, and it seems unlikely that the leadership took much,
if any, notice of its advice. Strictly speaking, the members of the
team were neither retired nor nonactive. In practice, they were very
much in a half-way house—prominent in the army, but not enjoying
the sympathy of the new ruling group around Suharto, and to al, in-
tents and purposes inactive.3i+
The early meetings of the Team Poleksos were chaired by Brig.
Gen. Abdul Karim Rasyid, who served as Kaspri Pangad between 1967
and 1970.35 The conclusions were sent, by way of the army com-
33.	The membership of the three subcommittees was Kelompok
Politik/Team Poleksos: Maj. Gen. Dr. Suhardi, Brig. Gen. Ibnu
Subroto, Brig. Gen. Brotosewoyo, Brig. Gen. Mas Isman, Brig. Gen.
Wijono, Brig. Gen. Djuhartono and Brig. Gen. J. Singedekane.
Kelompok Ekonomi/Team Poleksos: Brig. Gen. Sukendro (chairman),
Brig. Gen. Sunitioso, Brig. Gen. Njak Adam Kamil, Brig. Gen. Harun
Sohar, Brig. Gen. R. MD. Sudarman, Brig. Gen. Muljosudjono, Colo-
nel Brori Mansjur, and Colonel Sudarto. Kelompok Sosial/ Team
Poleksos: Brig. Gen. Sujatmo, Brig. Gen. Pirngadi, Brig. Gen.
Suprapto, Brig. Gen. Sardjono, Brig. Gen. Sujono Ongko, Brig.
Gen. Rahardjodikromo, and Colonel A. Batubara. For further details
see "Surat - Perintah, Nomer: Prin - 244/5/1968," signed by Pangga-
bean on May 28, 1968. There are some odd names in this group.
The Kelompok Politik included a number of "populist" Sukarnoist
officers; Djuhartono may even have been under arrest for a time in
1966. The Kelompok Ekonomi also included at least one officer (Su-
kendro) who had been under arrest in 1967-68 for apparent Sukarno-
ist leanings, and at least two officers (Sudarman and Sudarto) who
were widely thought to have been involved in questionable business
dealings. In the membership of the Kelompok Sosial were several
other officers of the Old Order period, including Pirngadi, Suprapto,
and Rahardjodikromo. I am indebted to Prof. Ben Anderson for mak-
ing this point.
34.	Interview with Maj. Gen. Sukendro, July 11, 1981.
35.	Born in Batang Kapas, West Sumatra, in 1914, General Rasyid
had spent much of his career away from Indonesia. He served as a
teacher in Malaya between 1932-41 and, having risen to the position
of chief of staff of a Peta unit during the Japanese period, served as
military attach^ in Bangkok and Rangoon 1951-56. He was charge
d'affaires (and later ambassador) in Cambodia from 1957 to 1965 and
ambassador to the Philippines in 1965-66. See 0. G. Roeder and70
mander, General Panggabean (and subsequently by way of the army
chief of staff, General Umar Wirahadikusumah) to President Suharto.
In the early 1970s, however, following the 1969 restructuring of
the armed forces, the body was dissolved. Djatikusumo, who had
joined in 1970 after serving as ambassador to France, proposed to the
then chief of staff of the army, Umar Wirahadikusumah, that, if it
was only a matter of reorganization, the body could be transferred to
the Defense Ministry and the other services brought in. But it ap-
peared that the group was not regarded favorably, and the govern-
ment seemed content to let it die.3^ According to Sukendro, who was
chairman of the Kelompok Ekonomi, the body was disbanded in 1971 or
1972.37
Late in 1977, however, the government did an abrupt about-
face on this issue, thus paving the way for the reemergence of an
association of retired generals. This was a result of two separate but
interrelated developments. The first centered on Sukendro, an ex-
Siliwangi officer who was to emerge as a central figure in the Fosko
(Forum for Study and Communication) leadership. Sukendro, a man
of swaggering self-assurance, flamboyant and sarcastic, was regarded
by many of the New Order generals as an incorrigible intriguer, a
reputation which stemmed from his time as assistant I (Intelligence) in
the late 1950s and his involvement in such organizations as the Liga
Demokrasi (Democratic League) in the early 1960s.
Born in Banyumas in 1923, Sukendro had played an active—and
sometimes controversial—role in army politics. In 1959, while serving
as Nasution’s intelligence chief at army headquarters in Jakarta, he
had been linked with a smuggling scandal at Tanjong Priok, the main
port of the capital city. Army-sponsored smuggling and barter oper-
ations had mushroomed in the regions in the period after a state of
war and siege was declared in 1958, not least in Central Java, where
the Diponegoro commander, Col. Suharto, and his intelligence chief,
Lt. Col. Ali Murtopo, were helping to devise new methods of collect-
ing revenue, and army headquarters was not slow in following suit.
This development was to lead to a temporary setback for Suharto—
who was quietly relieved of his command and sent to attend a special
course at SSKAD, the Army Staff and Command School in Bandung—
and public embarrassment for Sukendro and other senior officers in
Jakarta. The smuggling activities of the headquarters group, organ-
ized by Sukendro and Col. Ibnu Sutowo, then deputy chief of staff
for operations, ran afoul of an investigation undertaken by the
civilian attorney general, Catot Tarunamihardja SH. As the scandal
Mahiddin Mahmud, Who's Who in Indonesia, 2nd ed. (Singapore: Cunung
Agung, 1980), p. 225.
36.	Djatikusumo interview, March 9, 1981.
37.	Sukendro interview, July 10, 1981. According to Sukendro, the
idea to set up such a body "came from our side" and was approved
by the Menpangad.71
unfolded, an attempt was made on Gatot’s life, leading to suggestions
that Sukendro had been involved.
The following year Sukendro emerged as an active backer of the
Liga Demokrasi, an organization established to resist Sukarno's plans
to curb the power of Parliament. When the league was banned in
1961, the staunchly anti-Communist Sukendro was dismissed from his
position and sent abroad. Sukarno brought him back from virtual
exile in late 1963, and in September 1964 appointed him minister of
state for the Supreme Command for Economic Operations (Kotoe). Su-
kendro, very surprised to be recalled, felt that Sukarno may have
wanted him in the cabinet to "balance" Njoto, a key PKl leader who
had been appointed the previous month as one of three ministers sec-
onded to the Presidium and whose importance would soon grow when
he became a senior aide to the president. This is entirely plausible.
However, it has also been suggested that Sukarno wanted Sukendro
to keep an eye on the smuggling and intelligence activities of
Kostrad, the Army Strategic Reserve Command, now headed by Su-
harto, with Ali Murtopo as his intelligence officer, the idea being that
Sukarno was working on the principle that one should set a thief to
watch a thief. This too is possible. There were more than super-
ficial similarities between Sukendro and Ali Murtopo, and to some ex-
tent the former served as "Nasution's Ali Murtopo." Both men had
had long careers in army intelligence and both were viewed as devi-
ous and unscrupulous. Both had been involved in smuggling activi-
ties in the late 1950s and both were involved in putting out secret
feelers to the Malaysian government over Confrontation, Sukendro on
behalf of Sukarno, Ali Murtopo on behalf of Suharto and, indirectly,
the army commander, General Yani. (In the end, Ali Murtopo’s ef-
forts in this area were crowned with success, while those of Sukendro
failed, although Ali's success doubtlessly owed much to the fact that
he had more freedom of manoeuver than Sukendro, whose mission was
merely to explore the possibility of a new summit meeting.)
When Sukarno was eclipsed by Suharto, Sukendro’s days were
obviously numbered, and in fact the former intelligence chief was ar-
rested in mid-1967 and jailed for nearly nine months. In the view of
some senior officers, the ebullient Sukendro was an unreconstructed
Sukarnoist, a suggestion which is not entirely persuasive given his
implacable opposition to Sukarno's Nasakom concept in the late 1950s
and his subsequent exile abroad. In any event, Sukendro certainly
had no time for either Suharto or Ali Murtopo, and his appointment as
head of the economic grouping within the Team Poleksos can only be
seen as a crumb thrown his way by Suharto's New Order associates.
During the 1970s, Sukendro’s business interests prospered and
he became in time the president of the holding company of a number
of enterprises run by the Central Java provincial government. Mem-
bers of the ruling group, however, were never entirely sure that
Sukendro was confining himself to the business sector and, knowing
that Sukendro had no time for them and that he still had the capacity
to cause considerable mischief if he chose, tended to see his hand in72
every manifestation of opposition to their rule. Sukendro, in the
words of a close associate of Ali Murtopo, was "always a subver-
sive."38 A Western military attach^ who had known him for many
years took a wry—but not altogether different—view. "He’s so
tricky/’ he said, "he couldn't lie straight in bed. He was always an
intelligence man and people always wonder what he is up to. You
could offer him a nine-to-five job and he wouldn't take it. He'd
rather be doing his own thing."38
Though he seemed genuine enough in his expressions of con-
cern about the constrictiveness of New Order policies towards the
democratic processes, the rigidity of the Suharto group's interpreta-
tion of Pancasila, and the constraints imposed upon Islamic groups,
Sukendro also gave the impression at times that he was an old fox
who liked to be out, leading the Hankam hounds a chase, for the
sheer pleasure it gave him. There was a certain whimsy in his be-
havior, a savoring of the minor irritations his group of "seniors"
were able to cause those in power. Aware of how the Suharto gen-
erals viewed him, he tended nonetheless to be philosophical, choosing
to interpret their suspicions as a consequence of his success as an
intelligence officer in the late 1950s. Indeed, General Sumitro is said
to have assured him that this was the case.
According to Sumitro, it is due to my achievements in the
past in the intelligence field. So they always consider
that whatever the event, whether it be riots or anything
else, there must be a connection with Sukendro. That's
what Sumitro told me. He added about my achievements:
'There is no intelligence officer up to now who is greater
than you.' That is why I am always suspected.1+0
By 1977, Sukendro's activities had become a matter of consider-
able concern to the government, and Lt. Gen. Widodo, the commander
of Kowilhan II, was instructed by Kopkamtib in Jakarta to find out
what the former army intelligence chief was up to; Sukendro, Widodo
was told, was involved in "many actions against the government."M
In the course of his preliminary enquiries, Widodo asked the governor
of Central Java, Maj. Gen. Supardjo Rustam, about Sukendro. (Su-
kendro, in his capacity as the head of the perusohaan daerah [re-
gional enterprises] of the Central Java government, commuted fre-
quently between Jakarta and Semarang.) Supardjo suggested that it
would be better if Widodo contacted Sukendro directly, a course of
38.	Interview with Jusuf Wanandi, June 7, 1979. On another occa-
sion (June 7, 1980), Wanandi observed that Sukendro was "always a
schemer."
39.	Confidential communication, January 9, 1980.
40.	Interview with Maj. Gen. Sukendro, July 30, 1981 .
41.	Ibid.73
action which Widodo duly followed. Not long afterwards, on November
24, 1977, Widodo "invited” Sukendro to his home in Semarang for a
talk. ("You could consider it an interview or an interrogation,"
Sukendro recalled with some amusement.) Whatever the format, the
meeting apparently proved useful to both men. Sukendro had first
met Widodo in the tense days of January 1966 when, as a brigadier
general, he had been accompanied on an inspection of the student sit-
uation in Semarang by Lt. Col. Widodo.
Although Widodo told his visitor that the Suharto group had re-
ceived information that Sukendro was involved in numerous activities
against the government, the meeting, which ran for nearly three
hours, appears to have been cordial. Sukendro, aware that Widodo
was being spoken of as the next chief of staff of the army, found
this a useful opportunity to present his views on the current situa-
tion, and suggested to his host the usefulness of a "forum" for com-
munication between retired officers and the current military leader-
ship. Widodo, he felt, was close to Suharto, and, as it had also
been his experience that Widodo was always receptive to new ideas,
he felt that he might be able to "sell" some of his social-political
thoughts to the leadership via this channel. Widodo, he says, agreed
on the need for a study group of the kind proposed, and promised
that he would in fact set up such a forum if he were to become
Kasad.
In some ways, Widodo was well placed to serve as a lightning
rod for the discontent of retired officers, notwithstanding the fact
that he had, in earlier years, been very much eclipsed by some of
the senior officers with whom he would now come in contact. He
shared a number of these officers’ concerns and privately acknowl-
edged, as Murdani, Yoga, and others of that ilk refused to do, that
the armed forces had become altogether too dominant and that this
was not healthy for Indonesian democracy. But it would be wrong to
see Widodo as no more than an honest broker between active and re-
tired officers. At the time, the Kowilhan II commander was widely
seen as an up-and-coming figure in the armed forces and even spoken
of in some quarters as a possible future president. He was a man of
many facets, authoritarian, ambitious, and with intellectual preten-
sions, and his motives were almost certainly more complex than they
appeared. It is entirely possible that he saw himself as someone who
had a chance to be the next president, and that he was looking for
political support and a "new image" as open-minded in the pursuit of
this objective, in much the same way that General Sumitro had sought
to polish his image in 1973. Certainly it was felt by others that he
was cultivating a constituency, not least by Ali Murtopo and Benny
Murdani, who always insisted, perhaps correctly, that Widodo's only
claim to fame was his long association with Suharto, and that without
the president's backing he would never have reached such heights in
the first place. In the end, Widodo's efforts would prove counterpro-
ductive. He failed to persuade many people of his new-found intel-
lectualism—the surpassing mediocrity of the inputs from his Gajah
Mada "think tank" did not help—and his much-vaunted interest in a74
more puritanical approach and a clean officer corps dedicated to serv-
ing the people not only rang hollow in view of his own business in-
terests in Yogyakarta, but was perceived as indirect criticism of the
president and his family.
The son of a retired, low-ranking retainer in the Yogyakarta
kraton, Widodo had trained as a platoon-leader under the Japanese in
Bandung before being assigned to a unit of the Peta in Yogyakarta.
In 1945 he was the leader of one of the five companies which took
part in the celebrated attack on the Japanese garrison in Kotabaru
under the command of Suharto, then a Lt. Colonel. Unlike many of
his contemporaries, Widodo rose very slowly through the ranks. He
remained a captain for no less than eleven years—from 1945 to 1956.
In 1957, after eighteen months as a student at SSKAD, he was ap-
pointed an SSKAD instructor, a position he held for eight years
(1957-63). Among those he taught was his former battalion com-
mander, Suharto. He served under Suharto once again in 1962, when
he was appointed by the late Gen. Yani as chief of staff of the para-
troop task force undertaking operations in West Irian as part of the
Mandala Command. After two stints in the United States—at the in-
fantry school at Fort Benning in 1960 and the Command and General
Staff College at Fort Leavenworth in 1963—Widodo was assigned to
Central Java. The plan was that he would serve as regimental com-
mander in Yogyakarta. But when he reported for duty, the general
staff of the Central Java military command in Semarang, an area in
which the PKI wielded considerable power, refused to accept him. As
a compromise, Widodo was assigned as a member of the staff of the
local military commander, with special orders from Yani to report to
Jakarta on Communist activities in Central Java. Widodo is said to
have acted with initiative and despatch during the 1965 coup attempt,
taking bold actions at a time of great uncertainty and at a time when
the Diponegoro commander faltered. In the years since then he had
progressed steadily, if unspectacularly, through the ranks.
77?e Growing Unrest on Campus
The other developments had taken place on the student front.
Indonesian university students had been generally quiescent since the
Malari crackdown in January 1974, but by mid-1976 they were showing
signs of a new restlessness. What is more, there was an astringency
in their criticism that had earlier been lacking. In 1970, the student
movement had been concerned primarily with government corruption;
its tone, as Rocamora has noted, was ’’moralistic and almost apolit-
ical.”112 By the time of Malari, the area of student concern had ex-
panded to include economic nationalism and the activities of Suharto's
personal assistants. Now, it was Suharto himself who was under di-
42. See Joel Rocamora, "Excerpts from the 1978 Student White
Book,” Editors Note, Southeast Asia Chronicle (July-August 1978), p.
20.75
rect attack. Campus parades mocked the corruption and greed of
those in high office, the first family in particular, and student
leaders called into question the whole basis of the president's
development strategy. Early in 1977 there had been open student
agitation on behalf of the PPP. Now, in mid-1977, Dipo Alam, former
chairman of the University of Indonesia Student Council, thumbed his
nose at the Suharto government by publicly "nominating" former Ja-
karta governor Ali Sadikin as the new president. "As each incident
goes by unpunished," one commentator noted at the time, "the stu-
dents become increasingly emboldened. They are very rambunctious
at the moment and are really ready to do something. They are seek-
ing the outer limits of dissent and they haven’t found them yet.
They are a little surprised by that."*13 Initially, the government did
not seem particularly troubled by these developments, although
Widodo noted in a speech at about this time that "a culture stressing
opposition" was being created in society.**** However, student dis-
content, so long bottled up, was something that could not be ignored
very much longer.
In August, the minister of research, Dr. Sumitro Djojohadi-
kusumo, led a team of seven technocrats in the cabinet on a campus
"safari" aimed at explaining the government's long-term development
goals. The plan was to establish a "dialogue" with the students, but
this quickly backfired. The first round of talks between the Sumitro
group and students, held at the University of Indonesia on August 3,
set the tone for what was to be a series of noisy confrontations.
Students concentrated on the abuse of power, unequal distribution of
wealth, illegal levies, city bus fares, social injustice, the Pertamina
affair, and the so-called commercialization of public office.
The situation was not much better in Yogyakarta five days
later. About 1 ,000 students attended the meeting and grilled the
ministers about the dual role of the armed forces. They also wanted
to know why many civilian posts were staffed by nonprofessionals and
why Kopkamtib had not been disbanded.
However, the worst setback came when the ministers went to
the Pajajaran University in Bandung on August 13. Dr. Sumitro had
just finished his introductory remarks when the students, instead of
asking questions, read out a statement entitled "Attitude of Stupefac-
tion." This said, among other things, that the students would not
join the discussion because the dialogue would not ensure the settle-
ment of what the general public sensed to be the real problems. The
dialogue seemed designed to silence restlessness, they said, and as
such would not solve any problems or eliminate any discontent.
The students then outlined conditions that would have to be met
before they would agree to participate in any dialogue. These in-
43.	See David Jenkins, "Stirrings on the campus," Far Eastern Eco-
nomic Review, July 15, 1977.
44.	Ibid.76
eluded a guarantee that there would be a jointly written conclusion on
every problem discussed, a subsequent evaluation of the steps taken
by the government to execute the joint conclusion, and a provision
for further meetings. Adding to the overall sense of confrontation
were large posters, one of which proclaimed: "Eradicate corruption
entirely—change the Government."
By mid-August, it was clear that the dialogues had been a fail-
ure, and had only served to highlight the depth of student discon-
tent. Recognizing their failure, the government shelved its plans for
further government-student meetings in Surabaya, Ujung Panbang,
and at two centers in Sumatra. "The government is willing to have
an open dialogue with the students," Dr. Sumitro said later, "but if
they try to force their will as a starting point for political move-
ments, the government will have no other alternative but to deal with
them sternly.,,i+5 This sentiment was echoed by President Suharto in
his National Day speech the following day. Given the circumstances,
it was probably unrealistic to imagine that the government-student
dialogue could be productive. The students understood from the
start that no real "dialogue" was intended by the government, and
many felt that Sumitro’s abrasive and arrogant personality only
underlined this.
In November, the president was subjected to stinging student
criticism over allegations that his family was spending US$9.6 million
on an elaborate mausoleum on a royal burial hill in Central Java. At
a student rally in Jakarta, ostensibly to mark National Heroes' Day,
antiriot troops seized sixty-eight banners and placards on the
grounds that they were "not in line with the spirit of the Heroes' Day
celebration." One placard read: "The people are hungry and the
boss prepares his grave." Another said: "Heroes, look at the result
of your sacrifice." A third asked Admiral Sudomo, who was at that
time conducting a well-publicized antigraft campaign, when "the boss"
would be hit. At a similar rally in Bandung, one poster said
pointedly: "It is not the ideal of a hero to buy a mountain." In
Surabaya there was a placard which proclaimed: "The State is not the
property of Auntie Sun," an obvious tilt at the first lady, Madame
Tien Suharto, who had been accused of questionable business dealings
and who was often likened to the avaricious, nouveau riche "Auntie
Sun" featured in a popular song of the time.
The day after the demonstrations, President Suharto summoned
top military and civilian leaders to the palace for a three-hour review
of the security situation in the country. He instructed the officials
to be "alert and prepared," especially because of the actions of "a
small part of the population lately.There was no direct mention
45.	See David Jenkins, "Campus 'gibberish' halts dialogue," FEER,
September 2, 1977.
46.	See David Jenkins, "A chorus of critics for Suharto," FEER, De-
cember 9, 1977.'ll
of the students, but the president was known to have been deeply
stung by the taunts about the family mausoleum; several days later a
detailed rebuttal of the charges was published by Antara, the national
news agency. According to Antara, the development of the mauso-
leum was being carried out by a private foundation and not by the
presidential family. The cost was not US$9.6 million, it said, but
"only" US$1 million.1*7
Towards the end of November, the president addressed himself
personally to the question of student demonstrations. In a meeting
with sixteen university rectors, Suharto said that student actions
were "still within the limits of propriety" but cautioned that freedom
of speech could only exist if people acted responsibly and within
limits.1+8 He then asked the rectors to explain to the students that
the mausoleum was not his private property and gave them each a
booklet on the Mausoleum Building Foundation and its work. He also
denied publicly that his son Sigit had bought a US$3.3 million Jakarta
mansion from wealthy Indonesian businessman Hasyim Ning, described
as a "fishing mate" of the Head of State.
This was the sixth time in as many years that the president
had felt constrained to deny allegations of personal or family wrong-
doing, and some people were concerned that the continuing student
attacks, which were getting bolder and increasingly personal, might
drive him into a corner. In 1971, the president had thrown away his
prepared notes at the dedication of the new Pertamina hospital in
Jakarta and threatened to bring down the full weight of the armed
forces against students who continued to demonstrate against the con-
troversial Mini Indonesia project being built by Madame Suharto.
A New Wave of Criticism
If the student criticism was bad, there was worse to come.
Four days after the Heroes’ Day marches, Lt. Gen. Alamsjah, the
deputy chairman of the Supreme Advisory Council (DPA), delivered a
speech which was unusually critical of the New Order regime. Speak-
ing in Menado on behalf of the twenty-seven-man council, Alamsjah
said that it was necessary to acknowledge that efforts to fulfill revo-
lutionary aspirations were far from realized. Constitutional life re-
mained unstable and law reform had not been carried out. Each
year, said Alamsjah, the workforce increased by 1.4 million people.
Yet development efforts during two five-year plans had not provided
any significant hope. The social gap was still widening, "particularly
since the start of the development efforts."
"This imbalance is not only between the rich and the poor but
also between urban and rural, between the capital and the regions,
47.	Antara (November 1977).
48.	FEER, December 9, 1977.78
and between the regions." Foreign and domestic investment had
struck at the businesses of the little man and the middleman and the
question of land ownership had become acute. There were food
shortages in areas which had long been known as major granaries.
There was rampant crime in certain areas, scandals and manipula-
tions, smuggling, bribery, credit blockages, and misuse of authority.
Indonesia was importing commodities such as corn, soyabeans, copra,
and sugar, which it once exported. The country was supposed to
have been self-sufficient in rice in 1973 but it was feared that by
1985 it would be importing five million tons a year.
It was not surprising, Alamsjah said, that students, the young
generation, political parties, and community leaders were expressing
unrest and discontent. Political education was neglected and every
day one could see inequalities in the way the government upheld the
law.1+9
In the past, individual members of the DPA had made similar
criticisms of Government policy. But this was a collective broadside,
delivered in the name of the council as a whole, and it gave rise to
intensive speculation. Much of this centered on Alamsjah, who was
said to have become disenchanted with Suharto. The statement about
the widening gap between rich and poor, it was suggested, indicated
this. In his National Day speech in August, the president had gone
out of his way to say that the gap was being narrowed. Now, in a
speech which reflected the thinking of some of the nation's most dis-
tinguished elder statesmen, came an observation directly to the
contrary. Some people, it was suggested, were preparing to leave
the sinking ship.
There is, in fact, little evidence that this was the case.
Alamsjah and Suharto had been friends since early 1960 when the for-
mer, a lieutenant colonel who had recently arrived in Jakarta from
South Sumatra, was an assistant to Brig. Gen. Suharto, at that time
deputy I (Research and Development) to the chief of staff/army com-
mander. The friendship, based partly on the fact that Suharto and
Alamsjah were both "outsiders" who felt they were treated with con-
descension by better-educated fellow officers at army headquarters,50
had strengthened in the years that followed. And although Alamsjah
had had his ups and downs, his loyalty to Suharto had never been in
question. Alamsjah was, by his own account, well aware that the
content of the speech was sensitive, and says that for this reason he
had reported to Suharto before Menado and received his permission to
make the speech. "I am a military politician," Alamsjah said. "I
49.	The Alamsjah speech, which was a cut-and-paste version of the
annual DPA report to President Suharto, was delivered at the national
conference of the Association of Indonesian Social Scientists
(Himpunan llmiawan Pengetahuan Sosial, or Hipis) in Menado on No-
vember 14, 1977.
50.	Interview with Lt. Gen. Alamsjah, March 20, 1982.79
knew the situation. There were many issues that could be used
against him [Suharto]."51 The president, he says, gave his permis-
sion for him to raise these matters and was not angry or upset by
the speech.
Be that as it may, both men seem to have been taken aback by
the reaction to the speech. According to one account, Alamsjah sub-
sequently told members of the DPA that the incident had been blown
out of all proportion, and that "the Christians" were conspiring
against him; the speech had only been intended for social scientists
and yet it had been reported virtually in its entirety by the Jakarta
daily Sinar Harapan, a paper associated with the Protestant
Church.52 In fact, the coverage given to the Menado speech prob-
ably had more to do with the vagaries of journalism than with any at-
tempt by the Christians to undermine Alamsjah. Very much surprised
by the critical tone of the address, the deputy chief editor of Sinar
Harapan, Sabam Siagian, sent a full report to his office in Jakarta,
along with a request to the front page editor of the morning (Outer
Island) editions to put a restrained headline on the item. This was
done, but the editor of the main afternoon editions of the paper, with
an eye on street sales, ran the item under a banner headline reading:
"Alamsjah di Menado—Cap Sosial Melebar" ("Alamsjah in Menado—
Social Cap Widens"), which is said to have prompted an angry Su-
harto to instruct State Secretary Sudharmono to find out just what
Alamsjah was saying.53
At the same time, it is possible that Alamsjah, knowing that the
speech was bound to attract attention and having his eye on a posi-
tion in the soon-to-be-formed Third Development Cabinet, used the
occasion as a way out of reminding Suharto, boldly but not too
boldly, of his presence. If this interpretation is right, then Alamsjah
played his cards well. At 11 p.m. on March 23, 1978, barely four
months after the Menado speech, Alamsjah was summoned by Suharto
and offered the Religious Affairs portfolio. According to this inter-
pretation, Alamsjah was known well to Suharto, Ali Murtopo, Sudomo,
and Yoga as a man who was ambitious, not particularly bright, not
scrupulous, and not dangerous. If the president wanted to put an
army man and a Suharto man into the Religion Ministry, it is sug-
gested, the only other plausible candidate would have been General
Mohammad Jusuf, at that time minister of industry. As events were
to show, Suharto had Jusuf in mind as minister of defense. By ap-
pointing Alamsjah to the post, it is argued, the president was able
both to silence him effectively and tighten his own grip on the Reli-
gion Ministry in a difficult year.51*
51.	Interview with Lt. Gen. Alamsjah, March 24, 1982.
52.	Confidential communication, April 1982.
53.	Ibid.
54.	I am indebted to Prof. Ben Anderson for making this point. It
has been suggested in some circles that Suharto offered Alamsjah the
religion portfolio simply to "buy him off." This seems unlikely.80
Meanwhile, Muslim youth groups were joining the campaign
against the alleged shortcomings of the regime. Placards called on
the security forces to "investigate the Rupiah 4,500 million (US$10.85
million) grave" and spoke of "hell for the greedy" when a large reli-
gious rally was held in Jakarta late in November.55 These criticisms
were well covered in the local press. Unable to say' the sort of
things the students were saying, the papers took a vicarious delight
in reporting fully and faithfully the mounting attack on the honesty
and probity of the Head of State. At one stage it almost seemed as
though government-controlled newspapers were doing some sniping of
their own. Two days after the Heroes Day demonstrations, an article
in Angkatan Bersenjata, the official armed forces daily, made a force-
ful, if elliptical, plea to Suharto and the army leadership to wind up
the period of rule of the 1945 Generation and hand over honorably to
their successors in the next few years. Angkatan Bersenjata was
generally a vehicle for news about army promotions and laudatory fea-
tures about the achievements of the army-backed government. But in
this carefully argued "think piece," the writer, who used the nom de
plume Abu Firman, dealt publicly with political succession, generally
considered a "taboo" subject.
The theme of the article was that it was most important for
anyone finishing an enterprise, whether a painting, their life, or the
work of a generation, to get the finishing touch right. This could
only be done if the person or group concerned listened to the advice
and opinions of others and was aware of his or their own faults. The
author applied this generalization to the 1945 Generation. Although
the situation was still calm, the people were dissatisfied with their
leaders and, if one was honest, one could see the people’s deep rest-
lessness and worry. Some of this restlessness had been engineered
for political purposes but most of it was genuine concern (for the
good of the country) and based on altruistic motives.
At the meeting with Suharto on March 23, Alamsjah says,
Suharto, looking somber, made the observation that religion was the
biggest problem facing the nation and that he, Alamsjah, knew the
government’s policies and was the only man who could do the job.
Suharto reportedly said that Alamsjah not only had his trust as presi-
dent but also had the trust of, and was acceptable to, "the largest
religious group." He was, moreover, an armed forces man. Inter-
view with Lt. Gen. Alamsjah, March 24, 1982.
Well before the Menado speech, Suharto seems to have decided
that Jusuf should serve as minister of defense/commander of the
armed forces in the next cabinet. According to Jusuf, the president
first sounded him out about this job in August 1977, a good seven
months before the new cabinet was announced. He is said to have
mentioned the idea again in November 1977 and in January 1978. In-
terview with General Jusuf, July 25, 1979.
55. FEER, December 9, 1977.81
The 1945 Generation should cleanse themselves prior to the
early 1980s and their handover to their successors. They had a ten-
dency to want to see physical evidence of their efforts to develop the
country, and this tendency could be understood and praised. But if
their efforts to promote physical development were accompanied by the
pursuit of personal interests, this was a disgrace. "The moral pat-
terns of the Constitution and Pancasila have been brought into disre-
pute,” the article said. "It is always dangerous when the leaders ap-
pear to enjoy their power.”
There was a lesson to be taken from the Bharata Yudha, the
article continued, where King Abiyasa of Astina Pura, who was not
entranced into enjoying his power, handed it over to his two sons,
Destarata and Dewanata, and took on the role of "wise elder,” re-
spected by all because he had been clean and scandal-free during his
reign. King Abiyasa was contrasted in the article with King Dur-
yudana whose practices were bad and whose decisions were dictated
by greed. Civil war became inevitable, and the Pandawas, although
his cousins, fought him to defend justice and truth. They won be-
cause right was on their side. Thus King Abiyasa was capable of
putting the right finishing touch to his reign, but King Duryudana
could not do so and was destroyed by his cousins. The article fin-
ished with the sentence "let us take note of this.”56
That rather pointed parable, with its allusions to the contempo-
rary political scene, not unnaturally drew a good deal of comment.
This was not the first time that Angkatan Bersenjata had published
an article along these lines. But with the presidential elections just
over the horizon and critics zeroing in on the actions of the president
and his family it raised many eyebrows.57
In the midst of these developments, troubling enough in them-
selves for those in the government, Suharto received a bizarre report
that "some brigades" were behind Nasution and were ready to back
the student leaders. The details of this affair are not entirely
clear.58 However, it appears that a deputation of student leaders
56.	Angkatan Bersenjata, November 12, 1977. It is interesting to
note that exactly the same proposal was put to Sukarno in early 1967.
See Crouch, Army and Politics, p. 215.
57.	The identity of "Abu Firman" was never revealed. However, a
senior member of the newspaper staff told the author that Abu Firman
was a name used by a number of individual writers. (Interview, May
3, 1980.) There were no articles by Abu Firman for some months
after the King Abiyasa story although the column eventually reap-
peared; there had been a number of columns under this name in the
preceding period.
58.	The following account is based on a report in Merdeka on Decem-
ber 22, 1977, and interviews with Nasution on March 2, 1981 and No-
vember 10, 1981.82
from Bandung—including Iqbal, the acting chairman of the Bandung
Institute of Technology (ITB) Students Council—allegedly told a
secret student meeting at the Surabaya Institute of Technology (ITS)
that Nasution had informed them that "some brigades” were behind
him, and that he was sure these troops were prepared to assist the
student cause. An informer in the student ranks reported on this
development to the commander of the Brawijaya military region, Maj.
Gen. Witarmin, and he in turn informed the army chief of staff, Gen-
eral Makmun Murod. On November 20, when Nasution arrived at Yog-
yakarta to address a gathering at Gajah Mada University, he was
surprised to find the local Korem (Military Resort Command) com-
mander, Colonel Sitorus, waiting to meet him at the airport. Also
present was the assistant I (Intelligence) of the Diponegoro (Central
Java) military command, another colonel. These two officers, who
represented the panglima (commander) of the Diponegoro, presented
the former minister of defense with a copy of the official history of
the Diponegoro. Then, in a discussion with him in the airport VIP
room, they told him of the report from Surabaya and said they would
like to know more about the matter. Nasution says he was surprised
by the report, which had no basis whatsoever. Because the conver-
sation was being followed by students who were clustered around the
open door of the VIP room, Nasution says, he took the opportunity of
pointing out, in a voice loud enough for them to hear, that he could
never condone the idea of ABRI troops giving such an undertaking.
He had always taught, he said, that, under the Sapta Marga, a mili-
tary man did not fight for any individual but for ideals and prin-
ciples. The two Diponegoro colonels seemed satisfied by this explana-
tion and the meeting ended amicably.
Suharto, however, was not at all satisfied. While Nasution was
still traveling in Central and East Java the president summoned Mak-
mun Murod and the members of the Army General Staff to Bina
Graha, the presidential office block. At the meeting, Suharto de-
manded to know how far it was true that some brigades were loyal to
Nasution. Makmun Murod assured the president that this was out of
the question and that he knew nothing that would justify such a con-
clusion. Suharto insisted that this was what the intelligence report
had said. When Makmun Murod gave a guarantee that the report
could not possibly be accurate, Suharto apparently accepted the fact.
However, he made the point that several army colonels were still at-
tached to Nasution, an officer who had been pensioned off and who
no longer had any official function. Suharto ordered Makmun Murod
to withdraw these officers at once, stressing that Nasution ”has no
right to have army men there.” This order was carried out immedi-
ately. When Nasution returned to Jakarta he received a visit from a
colonel sent by the assistant I (Intelligence) of the army, Maj. Gen.
Harsoyo, informing him of the meeting between the president and the
senior army officers and of the discussions that had taken place con-
cerning the report about his alleged remarks to the students. The
director of personnel at Hankam also called on him to inform him
about the implementation of the president's order concerning his sec-
retary.83
Later, in mid-December, Nasution received a third official visit,
this one from Maj. Gen. Himawan Sutanto, the commander of the Sili-
wangi. Speaking as ”a son to a father,”59 Himawan told Nasution of
a new intelligence report, this one concerning a discussion by rep-
resentatives of all Indonesia’s student councils in Bandung in connec-
tion with Youth Pledge Day. According to the Siliwangi commander, a
student leader from Parahiyangan University had reported to the in-
telligence section that Nasution had expressed the people's dissatis-
faction and had said that ABRI was similarly dissatisfied with the
present situation, and that part of ABRI might be joining the stu-
dents' actions. Himawan indicated, respectfully and obliquely, that it
would be helpful if everyone were to remain within acceptable limits.
Nasution responded that the intelligence report, like the one he had
been told of in Yogyakarta, was without foundation and came as a
complete surprise to him. In comments published by Merdeka on De-
cember 22, he said that he had been framed twice recently.60
On top of all this, rumors had begun to circulate that General
Surono, the deputy commander of the armed forces, was mounting
some sort of challenge to Suharto and encouraging the students in
their endeavors. A year earlier, Surono had, unbeknownest to him-
self, been implicated in the socalled Sawito Affair, a bizarre plot by
Sawito Kartowibowo, a retired official and part-time mystic, to force
Suharto from office. In documents drawn up by Sawito, Surono was
listed as one of four advisers who would assist the former vice presi-
dent, Dr. Mohammad Hatta, run Indonesia after Hatta had received a
transfer of authority from Suharto. The fact that Surono's name had
been included among Sawito's advisers, although kept secret at the
time, may have accounted for some of the more persistent rumors
about Surono now.61 The new rumors were not particularly persua-
59.	Interview with General Nasution, March 2, 1981. The account of
Suharto's meeting with Makmun Murod was given by General Nasution
in an interview on March 2, 1981 and in written comments on Novem-
ber 14, 1981. Nasution based this account on what he was told by
the colonel sent by Maj. Gen. Harsoyo and by other sources.
60.	Merdeka, December 22, 1977. Details of the various meetings
with ABRI officials were outlined by Nasution in written comments on
November 14, 1981.
61.	During his interrogation, Sawito said that his group had been
hoping for the support of certain generals. When asked which gen-
erals, he answered, "Surono." There was no suggestion then or at
any other time that Sawito had contacted Surono or that the deputy
commander of the armed forces had any sympathy for his efforts.
Sawito's reference to Surono was passed on to Suharto, without any
effort being made to ask Surono whether in fact he was involved.
Surono was hurt and embarrassed at the apparent lack of trust in him
that this evinced. (Confidential communication, March 23, 1982.)
There is some (not very persuasive) evidence that at about this
time Suharto may have viewed Surono as a possible successor. After84
sive—Surono was viewed by his colleagues as a straightforward mili-
tary man who was genuinely apolitical—but the talk about growing
splits in the military ranks, with all the memories that invoked of the
Malari riots, was enough to persuade Suharto that something had to
be done.
The Official Response
Stung by the gathering criticism and by the report about the
two brigades, the president called in the defense minister, General
Maraden Panggabean, the army chief of staff, General Makmun Murod,
and other top military aides and let them know, in oblique but unmis-
takable fashion, that he would appreciate a show of support.62 At
the meeting, Suharto reminded his generals that he had not sought
the presidency. However, he said, he had been given the task and
would carry it out to the best of his ability. The recent criticism, if
allowed to continue unchecked, would weaken the office of the presi-
dency and make things difficult for whoever followed him in the
job.63
he had completed his term as Governor of West Java in 1975, Lt.
Gen. Solichin settled on a farm south of Sukabumi. One of his early
visitors was Suharto, who complimented him on the way he had
handled himself after retirement. Suharto expressed the wish to be a
farmer himself soon, after his retirement. He confided to Solichin
that Surono was being groomed as heir apparent. According to
Solichin, who gave this account to an old friend, Suharto sounded
genuine. This incident occurred in 1976. (Confidential communica-
tion, March 25, 1982.)
62.	Interview with Jusuf Wanandi, December 1977.
63.	Ibid. There were persistent rumors at the time that a number
of senior army officers were reconsidering their support for Suharto.
The evidence suggests that these rumors were not entirely un-
founded. Although nothing was said openly, there were informal dis-
cussions about the possibility of a change in the leadership. At the
same time, the author has been able to find no senior officer, active
or retired, who puts any credence on suggestions that Surono might
have mounted a challenge to Suharto at the time. (In 1980-1981 ,
when his name was sometimes put forward as a possible compromise
army candidate for the presidency should anything happen to Suhar-
to, the general feeling was that Surono would not be interested, and
would prefer to see someone else take the job.) Nasution says that
the army leadership had agreed at the Commanders Call before the
1977 general elections that Suharto and the vice president, Sultan
Hamengku Buwono IX, would stand again. (Interview, May 10,
1979.) The Sultan, of course, withdrew at the eleventh hour as a
result of his own private disenchantment with Suharto.85
Taking his cue from this, Panggabean summoned the nation's
top military leaders to a meeting at the Defense Ministry on December
13. The group emerged forty-eight hours later with a pledge that
the army would take strong action against anyone threatening the
"national leadership."611 Initially, the meeting had been restricted to
senior service officers in ABRI. But after two hours of talks, these
men decided to call in fellow generals serving in a kekaryaan (nonmil-
itary) capacity in the cabinet. Among the newcomers were the minis-
ter for home affairs, General Amir Machmud, and the minister for in-
dustry, General Mohammad Jusuf, the two surviving "kingmakers"
who had persuaded President Sukarno to transfer authority to Su-
harto in March 1966.65 Now a gathering of twenty-five generals, the
meeting ran for another six hours until a basic agreement was
reached on policy. The following day, the service officers continued
alone, hammering out matters concerning the implementation of the
policies drawn up. Then, after a final discussion with the president,
Panggabean called a press conference to announce what Suharto was
later to describe as a "brotherly warning."66 (Significantly, Widodo
was among those who felt there was no need for ABRI to give any
such "warning" to the populace.)67
With the conference over, Panggabean invited a number of
prominent retired generals to Hankam, with the aim, apparently, of
giving the impression that these officers were somehow in agreement
with the policy statement that was being issued.68 However, the re-
64.	A retired army officer who spoke to one of the participants was
told that the pledge had more the characteristics of a "command deci-
sion." Confidential communication, July 27, 1981. At the time, there
was a good deal of speculation over the wording of this statement,
some analysts concluding that the pledge of support for the "national
leadership" was a rebuff to the president, who was not referred to
by name. This was not necessarily the case. Senior army officers
argue, quite plausibly, that their loyalty is to the system and the in-
stitutions, not to any individual.
65.	These two officers had been promoted to full general several
months before the meeting. Some prominent army leaders, including
General Sumitro, were forceful opponents of the procedure of award-
ing military promotions to officers serving in a nonmilitary capacity.
66.	Kompas, December 17, 1977.
67.	Interview with General Widodo, November 17, 1981.
68.	According to a booklet issued by members of the "ex-Fosko"
group in 1980, "the original idea of a communications forum came up
at the time when General M. Panggabean held a briefing on December
14, 1977, concerning the plans of the ABRI leadership to face up to
the flare-up in the populace, particularly among the students. At
the time it was suggested that it was important to have a communica-
tions forum, especially between retired senior officers and those who86
tired generals refused to be a party to this. Having had no oppor-
tunity to help shape the statement, they were in no mood to give it
their automatic endorsement. There had been no participation by re-
tired army officers, Sudirman and several others told Panggabean,
and no consultation.69
Faced with truculent "seniors" and evidently feeling a need to
placate this group and have them on side, Panggabean agreed to set
up a suitable channel of communication. Not long afterwards, General
Darjatmo called Sudirman and suggested that a forum be set up to im-
prove communication between serving and retired officers. Sudirman,
who felt that this was a good idea, discussed the suggestion with
Sukendro who had only recently put such an idea to General Widodo.
Sukendro, he found, was also in agreement.
Sudirman accepted Darjatmo's view that Pepabri, the association
of retired military personnel, would be an appropriate vehicle for this
communication—but only on condition that certain changes were made
in its structure. Later, with Panggabean’s approval, discussions
were arranged with Colonel (retd.) Iskandar Widyapranata, the gen-
eral chairman of Pepabri. Before this meeting took place, however,
five retired officers—Sukendro, Lt. Gen. Jasin, Brig. Gen. Abi-
manju, Col. Alex Kawilarang, and Brig. Gen. Agus Prasmono—met at
Sudirman’s home to discuss the matter. (Lt. Gen. Mokoginta, al-
though invited, was unable to attend.)70 At this meeting it was de-
cided that Pepabri should not be used as a vehicle for communication
as long as it remained in its existing form. Pepabri had, at that
time, been a member of the keluarga besar Golkar (big Golkar family)
for more than a year, and the retired officers wanted to express
their views through an open and independent body. Another reason
why this initiative did not succeed was because Pepabri was more
concerned with the social problems of retired military men. The
were still active. General Darjatmo, who was at that time still serv-
ing as Kaskar, was very much in agreement with this idea." Apakah
Forum Komunikasi dan Studi Purna Yudha Itu? (Jakarta: Sekretariat
FKS Purna Yudha, 1980) henceforth Fosko Brosur 1980,
69.	Born in East Java in 1913, Sudirman had been panglima Brawi-
jaya (1952-56) and later commander of Seskoad in Bandung. A de-
vout Muslim, he was active in his retirement in the Perguruan Tinggi
Dakwah Islam (Islamic Mission of Higher Education). The PTDI was
established by Nasution as an army-backed counter to the People's
Universities (Universitas Rakyat, UNRA) which had been set up by
the PK, at the kabupaten level. See: The Indonesian Military
Leaders: Biographical and Other Background Data, 2nd ed. (Jakarta:
Sritua Arief Associates, 1979), pp. 264-65.
70.	In an interview (March 15, 1982) Maj. Gen. Sukendro said that
Lt. Gen. Djatikusumo was present at this meeting. However, Brig.
Gen. Abimanju is emphatic that Djatikusumo was not there. (Inter-
view, March 7, 1982.)87
reform-minded officers were anxious to deal not just with social prob-
lems but with political, economic, cultural, and legal ones as well.71
Finally, Pepabri included pensioned members of the KNIL (Royal
Netherlands Indies Army) that the TNI had taken over in 1950, and
there were those who could not accept these people as fighters
(pejuang).
In the meantime, the ruling group had had second thoughts
about using Pepabri as a communications channel. Widyapranata,
having received the green light from Hankam, had invited about
eighty retired military officers to submit their views at a special ses-
sion of the Pepabri. 2 However, a dispute broke out when Widya-
pranata said he could not follow a Hankam instruction that he control
the direction of the debate of the retired seniors and ensure that
their conclusions were in line with guidelines provided by the Min-
istry. ”1 cannot do this,” Widyapranata told an officer from Hankam.
"They are my seniors."73 Because of this, Hankam cancelled the
meeting.
As the efforts to set up a communications channel continued, a
storm broke over a speech in which Lt. Gen. H. R. Dharsono, the
former commander of the Siliwangi (West Java) military region and at
that time secretary general of the five-nation Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN), had called on the armed forces to be more
attentive to public unease. Addressing members of the Generation of
'66 in Bandung in mid-January 1978, Dharsono said that the most im-
portant thing was for the armed forces leaders to listen to the aspira-
tions of the common people. If they continued to rely on military
power and strength, he said, people would obey out of fear, not
love. The people were growing restive and their recent appeals sug-
gested that there was something improper in their relations with
ABRI. The New Order had diverted from its original ideals and
needed redirecting.	Although Dharsono had stressed that he was
speaking in a private capacity, his criticism was too much for the
ruling group. Furious at this outburst, Panggabean summoned the
three-star officer and demanded that he apologize, as had other non-
active officers, including Lt. Gen. Kemal Idris, who had voiced simi-
71.	There is no relation between the Veteran's Association (LVRI)
and Pepabri. All retired military men are, by law, veterans. How-
ever, not all of them become members of Pepabri.
72.	Although invited, Nasution had not intended to go himself. In-
terview with General Nasution, May 10,	1979. In the event, the
meeting was cancelled by either Hankam or Kopkamtib.
73.	Interview with Nasution, March 11 , 1982. Mrs. Yani, widow of
the former army chief of staff, General Achmad Yani, was among
those invited to participate. She was angry when the government
cancelled the meeting.
74.	Antara, January 17, 1978.88
lar criticisms. When Dharsono refused, the government decided that
he should be removed from his ASEAN position, a decision which en-
tailed mounting a significant lobbying campaign amongst fellow mem-
bers of the association. In the midst of these developments, the gov-
ernment decided to take swift and decisive action against its critics.
On January 20 it closed down half a dozen leading newspapers and
sent troops into university campuses to round up some of its more
outspoken political opponents. This was seen by many as an over-
reaction to the problem but was deemed necessary by armed forces
leaders, who argued that, unless something were done to nip the
growing unrest in the bud, the nation might be faced with another
Malari-type disturbance.
As criticism of the government had mounted, the value of a
communications channel for retired officers became increasingly appar-
ent. And though Pepabri had been ruled out as a forum, the momen-
tum already built up was not lost, neither the government nor the re-
tired officers being anxious to see the failure of attempts to set up
such a body. At a meeting with Sudomo on January 31 , 1978, mem-
bers of the new grouping delivered a report concerning the formation
of a provisional forum. This body consisted of retired senior officers
from the Brawijaya, Siliwangi, and Diponegoro military regions, to-
gether with some other "seniors” from outside Java. It was known,
perhaps inevitably, as the "Brasildi Plus" group. Officially, it was
for all retired army officers. In reality, it was for ex-members of
the three big Java "divisions.1,75
Sudomo was strongly in favor of such a body.76 But the real
push, once the organization was off the ground, was to come from
Widodo, who, as expected, had moved up from Kowilhan II to become
army chief of staff. On April 12, 1978, Widodo announced the official
existence of a "TNI Forum for Study and Communication," or, as it
was more popularly known, "Fosko TNI-AD"77 This was to be a sub-
75.	Nasution interview, May 10, 1979. Strictly speaking, there had
been no Siliwangi, Diponegoro, or Brawijaya "divisions" since 1948.
These evocative names had been retained, however, when in the
period 1957-1959 the seven Tentara dan Territorium (TT), or Troop
and Area Commands, were transformed into seventeen regional military
commands [Kodam). At that time TT III (West Java) became Kodam
VI Siliwangi. TT IV (Central Java) became Kodam VII Diponegoro
and TT V (East Java) became Kodam VIII Brawijaya. (Part of the
former TT III was hived off to become Kodam V Jaya (Greater Ja-
karta.) A new staff and command structure ensured that younger
officers were no longer identified with a particular "division" as an
earlier generation had been. In the early 1970s, the South and Cen-
tral Kalimantan Kodams were merged, reducing the number to sixteen.
76.	See Fosko Brosur 1980, p. 8.
77.	TNI-AD, i.e. Tentara Nasional Indonesia-Angkatan Darat (Indo-
nesian National Army).89
organization of the Yayasan Kartika Eka Pakci, an army foundation
which was chaired by the chief of staff.78 In the months that fol-
lowed, Widodo was to play a central role in coordinating and develop-
ing the views of both the serving officers at Seskoad and the retired
officers in Fosko.79 Widodo had been installed as chief of staff on
January 26, 1978, six days after the Suharto government's crackdown
on the opposition. It was a tense and difficult time and the govern-
ment actions had focused further attention on the question of ABRI's
proper role in society. And Widodo, though he won the respect and
trust of those who sought to purify the system, may well have paid
for this; when he was replaced as chief of staff barely two years
later, there were many who felt that his involvement with Fosko had
played at least some part in his downfall.
78.	Fosko Brosur 1980, p. 8. See also "Surat Keputusan No.:
060/YKEP/1978," of the Yayasan Kartika Eka Pakci, Jl. Merdeka Utara
2, Jakarta, concerning the "Inauguration of the Organisational Struc-
ture and Composition of the Board of the Forum for Study and Com-
munication of the TNI." This document was signed by Widodo in his
capacity as chairman of the Dewan Pengurus, YKEP, on July 20,
1978. When Nasution was pensioned in 1972, the chief of staff, Gen-
eral Umar Wirahadikusumah, offered him the job of heading the YKEP
with the aim of helping take care of the welfare of former TNI men in
the widest sense. However, Nasution declined. (Interview with Gen-
eral Nasution, July 27, 1981.)
79.	Ibid.CHAPTER FOUR
THE CALL FCR PURIFICATION: FOSKO AND THE LKB
This effort achieved momentum with the appointment of
Gen. Widodo as Kasad [army chief of staff], Widodo tried
diligently to provide a communications forum for retired
officers.
—Gen. A. H. Nasution1
With official recognition and the sympathetic ear of the army
chief of staff, Fosko blossomed. On July 21, 1978, Widodo sent a
two-page letter to the newly installed minister of defense, General
Mohammad Jusuf, reporting on the formation of the Forum for Study
and Communication TNI and on developments to date.2 In this letter,
the chief of staff noted that, on being appointed Kasad, not only had
he become responsible for the "organic” military but he had become
chairman of the Kartika Eka Pakci Foundation (YKEP) as well. This
foundation, which had been set up in August 1972 and which con-
sisted of all former army chiefs of staff, had the task of making rec-
ommendations to the Kasad on "the maintenance of the ideological
struggle of the army."3 It was already managing the Achmad Yani
Technical Academy, and Widodo noted that it had been considered ap-
propriate for it to serve as a channel for the conveyance of social
and political problems that might arise, both now and in the future.
To this end, he had set up Fosko-TNI. All financial needs would be
taken care of by funds from the YKEP but most of the personnel
would be "senior Pati" TNI.4 Although the forum had only been es-
1.	Genera, Nasution, in a written communication, July 27, 1981.
2.	Letter from Kasad, Genera, Widodo, to Menhankam/Pangab, Gen.
Jusuf, No: 314/V,11/1978, July 21 , 1978. Widodo was installed as
chief of staff on January 26, 1978, just as Fosko was being organ-
ized. Jusuf was named defense minister on March 29, 1978.
3.	Interview with General Widodo, November 17, 1981. The founda-
tion counted many prominent generals among its members, including
Umar Wirahadikusumah, Surono, Panggabean, and Suharto. Accord-
ing to Widodo, the members of the foundation met very infrequently
—"maybe once in three years or once in five years." It was "very
difficult to collect them" all in one place at one time.
4.	Pati, an acronym for Perwira Tinggi (Senior Officers), meant offi-
cers of brigadier general rank upwards.
9091
tablished a short time, he reported, it had already been able to send
him reports in the form of working papers. "In my opinion,” Widodo
wrote, ’’the results are quite good and have been very useful to me
in carrying out my duties as Chief of Staff.’’5 6
Considering that social-political developments occurred very
quickly, Widodo said, he had authorized the Fosko group to contact
the minister of defense; Lt. Gen. A. J. Mokoginta (retd.) had been
appointed as the contact officer on behalf of the group, and had in
fact held several meetings with the minister, one of which took place
on June 8, 1978. In conclusion, Widodo said that he would like to
report officially to Jusuf that the activities of the senior officers
whose names were attached were valid according to law. It was nec-
essary, he felt, to raise this matter so that in practice none of the
people involved would encounter any difficulties or obstacles.
If Fosko had some high-level active officers among its sup-
porters, its membership list also included the names of some distin-
guished, if sometimes prickly, former army leaders. The Fosko
presidium consisted of Lt. Gen. G. P. H. Djatikusumo, Lt. Gen.
Sudirman and Maj. Gen. Achmad Sukendro. The secretary general
was Lt. Gen. H. R. Dharsono, who had come into the grouping almost
immediately after being dropped as secretary general of ASEAN. The
’’political sector" consisted of Mokoginta and Brig. Gen. Daan Jahja.
Lt. Gen. Mohammad Jasin was a member of the "economic sector" and
Lt. Gen. Sugih Arto a member of the "legal sector." Col. Alex
Kawilarang was one of the ordinary members. Apart from Dharsono,
who was new, the eighteen-man Fosko central leadership reproduced
almost unchanged the membership of the loosely organized Brasildi
discussion groups, the one notable exception being Brig. Gen.
Abimanju, who had reservations about the political orientation of a
number of the key retired officers in Fosko and who declined to join.
Given that Fosko was soon making some rather far-reaching, al-
beit discreet, suggestions to the ruling group about the need for
more democracy and a reduction in the role of the armed forces, it
should be said at once that none of the Fosko leaders had ever
carved out a reputation as a flag-bearer of participatory democracy or
advocate of a lower military profile while still in uniform. Most had
been deeply involved in military politics for more than thirty years,
and some of the more prominent leaders had earned themselves repu-
tations as authoritarian men who brooked little or no interference in
their affairs. Dharsono had been prepared to use the army’s power
to dragoon the political parties in West Java into two groups in the
late 1960s. Jasin had been more than happy to take stern measures
against the PNI and other parties in East Java in 1967. Mokoginta
5.	Widodo letter, July 21 , 1978.
6.	See Susunan Pengurus: Forum Studi dan Komunikasi TNI
(Jakarta, Yayasan Kartika Eka Pakci - Forum Studi dan Komunikasi
TNI, [July 20], 1978).92
had been known as a tough, even brutal, CPM (Military Police) man
and had been very repressive when serving as interregional com-
mander in Sumatra in the early New Order period. Sukendro, as we
have seen, enjoyed a reputation as a devious and conspiratorial man
with few moral scruples.
It should also be acknowledged that some of these retired offi-
cers were disenchanted with the ruling group for one reason or an-
other, a factor which, some would later argue, cast doubt on their
credibility as critics of government policy. As we have seen,
Sukendro had little or no time for the Suharto group. Nor had
Jasin, who had been passed over as army chief of staff in 1973 and
who was offended by the government's refusal to do anything about
the high level of corruption. Nor had Dharsono, who was still smart-
ing from the humiliation he suffered when the government engineered
his removal as secretary general of ASEAN. These factors notwith-
standing, it would be wrong to take an overly cynical view of the
calls for reform that were soon being put forward by the retired se-
nior officers in Fosko. These men, whatever their past actions and
present dislikes, gave every appearance of being genuinely concerned
about the need to reform the system and in time they were able to
persuade others, including a number of prominent, but skeptical,
civilians, of their sincerity.
Certainly they wasted no time in getting down to business.
Meetings were held at least once a week, and it was not long before
recommendations from the Fosko presidium in Jakarta were arriving on
Widodo's desk. In a letter to the army chief of staff on March 28,
1978, Djatikusumo, as chairman of the four-man Fosko daily board,
forwarded an eight-page "memorandum" regarding a meeting of the
senior officers with Widodo on March 9.7 This Fosko memorandum
7. Letter of Djatikusumo to Widodo, March 28, 1978. This was the
first of five "Working Papers" [Kertas Kerja) forwarded to Army
Chief of Staff Widodo, henceforth cited as Kertas Kerjo l-V. In
Djatikusumo's letters to Widodo and in the Fosko working papers, the
president was referred to as Rekan (comrade or colleague)—not as
president, not as general, not even as kawan, the genuinely friendly
word for "friend." "Rekan" here is rather chilly—almost "col-
league"—and something of a putdown. Djatikusumo's use of the term
"Saudara" in addressing Widodo is polite and "army-brotherly."
Sundhaussen is wrong in suggesting that it would have been more
"correct" to use the term "Bapak." Djatikusumo is significantly
older, the son of a Javanese king, a distinguished revolutionary era
commander and former army chief of staff, on every dimension Wi-
dodo's superior. Sundhaussen's statement that Djatikusumo could
remind Widodo "of their common service in the Diponegoro division" is
also incorrect. (See Sundhaussen, "Regime Crisis in Indonesia:
Facts, Fiction, Predictions," Asian Survey 21 (August 1981 ): 827).
Djatikusumo headed the Ronggolawe division which operated in the
Semarang-Tuban north coastal area in 1945-47 before he went to head93
noted that, although Suharto had been unanimously reelected for a
third five-year term on March 23, the MPR session had taken place in
an "atmosphere of war." The Fosko members hoped that their memo-
randum would be considered and would prove useful in reinstating the
army's authority.
The major thrust of the memorandum was that the atmosphere of
confrontation should be changed to a more normal atmosphere, from
the top to the bottom, by eliminating feelings of fear, hatred, rest-
lessness, apprehension, and so on. To do this would require high
moral courage. At the same time, the memorandum noted, it was nec-
essary to listen to what members of the younger generation were say-
ing, especially those who had been active and vocal in disseminating
"negative images." Once again, high moral courage was necessary
(a) to face and talk with these people, (b) to acknowledge that which
was true in what they were saying, and (c) to correct them by
teaching them where their concepts were wrong. As the rector of the
Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), Prof. A. M. Satari had said,
"in confronting the happenings that are now being faced by our
schools of higher education we must display a mature attitude. It is
not proper if we are carried along merely by emotions and frustra-
tion." Finally, it would be best, the Fosko document said, if the ac-
tivities at the "Laboratorium Widodo" could begin, so that in the
shortest period possible the restoration of the TNI-AD could be
started scientifically.* * 8
On May 20, 1978, less than two months later, Djatikusumo sent
Widodo a thirteen-page "Second Working Paper" entitled "TNI and its
Dual Function."9 This document, perhaps the most important pro-
duced by the retired senior officers in Fosko, made three main
points. First, it declared that while the dwifungsi had in principle
been conceptually sound during a certain period in the national
struggle, it should be studied and reviewed. Its realization needed
immediate corrections, meaning that it should be adapted to the
people's development. Second, political life in Indonesia should be
disciplined, based on fundamental democratic principles, particularly
equal opportunity for all groups to pursue their political ambitions.
Finally, the TNI should be freed from involvement in the political
parties and groups. It should return to its original position, one
parallel to all the other groupings of national fighters in society, and
not part of any one of those groups. Moreover, it was to be hoped
that, because of its moral values, the TNI would remain above all
groups [berada diatas semua golongan). In 1965 the PKI had not
succeeded because the TNI still thought, acted, and had an attitude
based on Sapta Marga and was not only a tool.
the academy in Yogyakarta. I am indebted to Ben Anderson for clar-
ifying this point.
8.	Kertos Kerja Z, May 20, 1978.
9.	Djatikusumo letter to Widodo, May 20, 1978.94
The Fosko working paper concluded with three suggestions.
First, the authors hoped that within the next year or two, by the
end of 1979 at the very latest, the implementation of the dwifungsi
principle would be corrected so that it went back as far as possible
to its base. This would open the opportunity for the dwifungsi to
continue to be merely a latent function of the TNI, implemented only
as and when necessary. Second, the authors said that the current
leadership should not force policy outlines and the values included in
those outlines onto the new generation. Rather, it was to be hoped
that an open, two-way dialogue with the future leadership generation
would achieve a reciprocal understanding that could be used to bridge
the generation gap and lessen tensions between generations. Finally,
political life in society should be directed in a correct way so that
political parties were not forced to function in a conformist fashion
according to the desires of those in power.10
The issues raised in the May 20 Fosko paper—the need to re-
view the dwifungsi doctrine and its implementation, the stress on the
importance of democratic principles, and the reminder that ABRI
should be above all groups in society, not siding with one group or
another—are strikingly similar to those set forth in the Seskoad paper
drawn up by Abdulkadir Besar. However, this was not a case of one
group taking up and developing the ideas of another. Rather, it was
an instance of different groups independently giving expression to
ideas already abroad in the community. The Fosko paper was written
by Dharsono, Sukendro, and Mokoginta, with Daan Jahja also playing
a role. Yet Dharsono says that neither he nor his colleagues had
seen the Seskoad paper at the time they put down their own views on
the dwifungsi.* 11
Fosko’s third working paper, which Djatikusumo forwarded to
Widodo on September 14, was a twelve-page document which addressed
itself to "The Functional Croup and Its Problems/Issues" {Golongan
Karyo Dengan Permasalahanya).12 Drawn up on the eve of Golkar’s
Second National Congress (MUNAS II) in Bali in October 1978, it de-
veloped themes that had been introduced in the second working paper
and made a ringing call for the armed forces to abandon their active
support for Golkar and stand above all groups in society.
In his covering letter, Djatikusumo wrote that Fosko was send-
ing the working paper in view of the fact that the MUNAS II of
Golkar was about to be held. "We strongly hope," he wrote, that the
meeting would produce "decisions that can support the development of
the MPR in March 1978, particularly in MPR decree No. IV/78 con-
cerning the GBHN."
10.	Kertas Kerja //, May 20, 1978.
11.	Interview with Lt. Gen. Dharsono, November 12, 1981.
12.	Djatikusumo letter to Widodo, September 14, 1978.95
In a section dealing with ABRI's role as a social-political force,
the paper said that it was necessary to review the message of the late
General Sudirman that the only national property that was still whole
and unchanging, notwithstanding all sorts of challenges and changes,
was the TNI.1* It was the responsibility of all those associated with
ABRI—active ABRI employees, karyawan ABRI, retired servicemen,
other members of the big ABRI family, ABRI wives, veterans, and so
on—to ensure that the validity of the above declaration existed not
only during the life of General Sudirman but also "today, tomorrow,
and in the future." It was necessary, the paper said, to ask oneself
two questions: Whether the TNI was still the only national property
that was still intact and unimpaired? And whether the TNI still stood
above all groups?li+ If the answers to these questions were negative,
"then, in a soldierly way we must have the courage to make correc-
tions in order to achieve 'the unity of ABRI and the people'
[manunggaling ABRI dengan Rakyat}."
In the period leading up to the birth of the New Order, the
paper said, the TNI had had very many experiences and had cer-
tainly emerged as a determining political force. The dwifungsi had
been formally accepted and legalized, and this had consolidated the
role of the TNI/ABRI as a "dinamisator" and "stabilisator." At the
same time, one had to admit there had been excesses. There was
suspicion and dissatisfaction and, of late, estrangement; so much so,
in fact, that a student poster had said, "Bring ABRI Back to the
People." Drawing on a Maoist analogy often quoted (usually without
attribution) by senior army officers, the document said that relations
between the TNI/ABRI and the people could be likened to that of a
fish in water. The TNI/ABRI as both a defense and security force
and a social force must at all times strive for the unity of the armed
forces and the people and must stand above all groups. In order
that the people could freely estimate that the armed forces were tak-
ing measures to unify themselves with the people and stand above all
groups, the TNI/ABRI must in an honest way make self-corrections
and self-criticisms. The armed forces should not cultivate [membina]
Golkar, as in reality Golkar was just like a political party and func-
tioned in the same way. The term "golongan" (group) was used to
describe Golkar, but in actual fact it was a political party. The term
"political party" was used to describe other institutions, but the in-
stitutions thus described were not in fact political parties. It was
said that members of the armed forces were prohibited from becoming
members of political parties, but in reality individuals and personali-
ties of ABRI occupied positions as members of the Control Councils
(Dewan Pembina) of Golkar, both in Jakarta and in the provinces.
"As a conclusion from the above," the paper stated, "it is clear that
'The TNI as a social-political force must be above all groups."' The
guidance, leadership, management, and so on of Golkar within the
13.	Kertas Kerja III, September 14, 1978.
14.	Ibid., p. 9.96
framework of the implementation of the dwifungsi should be entrusted
to the big ABRI family—that is, the organization of ABRI wives, re-
tired servicemen, veterans, disabled veterans, Hansip (Civil De-
fense), Hanra (People's Defense), and so on. From among TNI mem-
bers who were still active, there should be selected those who in the
opinion of the leadership had potential for work within the world of
politics. These servicemen should be released from their military
duties and placed within the Golkar organization, Golkar itself having
severed its ties with	the government	and Hankam; Golkar,	it was to
be hoped, would at	the same	time	be restructured	and	become a
proper political party.
In a subsequent section,	the	paper said that,	in	order for
ABRI and the people	to become	one,	it was necessary	for	the armed
forces to embrace all of the people, whether they were within a politi-
cal organization or not. Because of this, it was not right that ABRI
should side with one group and be active in its development so that
other groups appeared to be inappropriate: "ABRI must be above all
groups. [ABRI harus berada diatas semua golongan.] With the plac-
ing of ABRI officials in Golkar's Dewan Pembina it becomes a fact that
ABRI is siding with one social-political force. Does this not appear
to obstruct the aim of creating unity between ABRI and the
people?"15 ABRI officials, the paper suggested, should resign from
their positions as members of the supervisory council of Golkar, par-
ticularly the chairmanship.
In a section dealing with the weaknesses of the Golkar organ-
ization, the paper made two specific points. First, it said, Golkar
had not yet shown maturity in its organization. It depended too
much on, and accepted too much help from, the government apparatus
and ABRI; it lacked resolution in cadre-formation, with the result
that the abilities that were needed from the cadres were not available;
it was not rooted sufficiently in society as a whole; and the construc-
tion of the group's organization, as well as its operational field activi-
ties, was still department-oriented and bureaucratic. Second, Golkar
was still weak in political activities. The leaders of the functional
group did not communicate or consult with others; they did not show
sensitivity towards the people or to those who had elected them; they
were not sufficiently capable or militant in facing their competitors,
particularly in the social-political field; nor were they consistent in
implementing their political struggle.
By now, clearly, Fosko was warming to its work. Having
stressed the importance of the notion that ABRI should be "above all
groups" and "close to the people," the September working paper
zeroed in on the hypocrisy inherent in the heavy military involvement
in Golkar affairs, being specific to the point of bluntness about just
where the changes should be made.
Fosko's fourth working paper, a thirteen-paper document which
Djatikusumo forwarded to the army chief of staff on January 5, 1979,
15. Ibid., p. 11.97
was entitled: "Some Notes Concerning the Consolidation and Control of
TNI/ABRI; TNI/ABRI as a Social Force: Uniting ABRI With the
People; and Dynamic National Stability.1116 It was, in many ways, a
reworking of the themes that had been developed in paper No. III.
Two months later, on March 5, 1979, Djatikusumo sent Widodo Fosko
Working Paper No. V, a thirteen-page study dealing with equity and
development.17
In the space of twelve months, the retired generals in Fosko
had produced five papers, all of them warning that, unless the gov-
ernment made adjustments, there would be a widening of the gap be-
tween the people and the army. At the same time, Fosko had warned
that, if things continued as they were, people would lose faith in the
Pancasila and the Constitution.
By May 1979, Fosko was getting too bold for the government's
liking, and a decision was taken to sever its official links with the
army. This stemmed from the organization's participation in a contro-
versial commemoration of National Awakening Day. At a meeting in
Jakarta on May 7, the leaders of twenty-one groups, including Fosko,
came to the conclusion that there had been a vacuum in political life
over the preceding ten years. It was necessary, these groups felt,
to make a profound study of why the sense of national awareness had
weakened. To this end it was decided to make the commemoration of
the May 20 National Awakening Day the starting point for a "Program
of National Awareness.1,18 The National Awakening Day committee's
list of advisers included such figures as Vice President Adam Malik,
former Vice President Dr. Mohammad Hatta, the coordinating minister
for people's welfare, General Surono, and the ambassador to Japan,
Lt. Gen. Sajidiman. The general chairman was Maj. Gen. Achmadi of
the Angkatan 45, an odd appointment given that he had been in
prison for many years. Dr. Jusuf Ismail, the chairman of Leppenas,
the Malik "think-tank," and a former ambassador to Japan and West
Germany, was one of the first vice chairmen. General Sukendro was
the other.19 The secretary general was Imam Waluyo, a former stu-
16.	Kertas Kerja IV, January 5, 1979.
17.	Kertas Kerja V, March 5, 1979.
18.	Tempo, June 9, 1979.
19.	Interview with Dr. Jusuf Ismail, December 5, 1979. The twenty-
one groups, many of them with a somewhat oppositionist coloring,
were as follows:
DHD-45 DKI Jaya; Fosko TNI-AD; Soksi (Sentral Organisasi
Karyawan Sosialis Indonesia); Kosgoro; GMNI; GMKI; Wirakarya
Indonesia; Gema MKGR: G. M. Kosgoro; Yayasan 17-8-45; LSS Dewan
Hankamnas; Yayasan Idayu; Sekr. Darmo 49; Leppenas; PSA; Yaya-
san Gedung Bersejarah; LPEP; Indonesia Muda; LBH; DKJ; HIPKI.
See Daftar Panitia Bersama Peringatan Hari Kebangkitan Nasional
1979. (Copy made available by Jusuf Ismail.)98
dent activist who had been detained in the wake of the Malari riots of
1974, and who later became a director of Leppenas.
The week-long commemoration program, which included a series
of lectures by such New Order figures as Ali Murtopo, as well as a
panel discussion, did not raise any difficulties. However, a speech
delivered by Adam Malik at the closing session so angered the gov-
ernment that its wrath fell on all those who had taken part. Speak-
ing extemporaneously, the vice president said that the floods, wereng
pests, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and diseases which had re-
cently struck the country "are really a warning from Cod to us."
"We have all sinned," said Malik. "We have pledged to be loyal to
and apply and practice the Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution but
the vows were often not fulfilled by deeds. This is our sin. This is
a fundamental problem and the major cause of the jams in government
operations." According to the vice president, some government offi-
cials were simply "stooges," who listened but did not understand,
who saw but did not observe. These people, he said, did not care
about Pancasila, the 1945 Constitution, or the fate of the common
man. A few weeks earlier, Malik had warned that, if things con-
tinued in the present way, the highest leaders in the land would be
"hanged." Now he added a curious rider to his remarks that only
seemed to make matters worse. No matter how wrong the situation
was, no matter how big the fault of the New Order government, there
was still a way to make corrections. "Our people are not fond of
coups," said the vice president. "Our people are not that stupid."
In Indonesia, where criticism tends to be veiled and elliptical, the
Malik speech—like the Alamsjah speech of 1977—had an immediate im-
pact. Malik was known as a man who liked to speak his mind, but
many in the government, including prominent military figures, felt
that he was going altogether too far.
In making his observations, Malik seemed to be identifying him-
self with some of the more outspoken critics of the regime. His de-
liberate use of powerful Javanese court imagery about signs of decay
in society was hardly calculated to win the sympathy of Suharto, a
Javanese ruler who set considerable store by such omens. Indeed,
two days after Suharto returned from a working visit to Japan, Malik
issued a "clarification," in which he claimed his words had been mis-
interpreted. Malik, in fact, considered that there was no need for a
clarification. He told reporters the speech had been "a small thing"
and that it had been blown up out of perspective. Asked why he
had to give an explanation, he shrugged and said: "Apparently they
needed a clarification, so I gave one." The response was classic
Malik, glib and seemingly accommodative. But while it showed a nice
regard for the political realities, it did not really do justice to the
20. For a more detailed account of this rather extraordinary speech,
see David Jenkins, "Adam’s Heavenly Warning," FEER, June 29, 1979,
p. 30. The Malik speech was delivered on June 1 at the Craha Purna
Yudha (Veteran's) Auditorium.99
vice president's true feelings. For some time, Malik had felt that
things were going wrong in Indonesia, particularly in areas that fell
within the competence of the Western-trained technocrats. This, com-
bined with a certain frustration at having been moved from the center
of decision making, a tendency to shoot from the hip when speaking
without notes, and, no doubt, a calculated assessment that he could
probably deliver himself of a few well-chosen barbs and get away with
it, gave the speech its astringency. Not surprisingly, the observa-
tions were given full coverage in the local press. The nationalist
daily Merdeka saw it as a sign of progress that government officials
were now prepared to criticize themselves and their leadership.
Tempo found Malik's remarks rather "sensational" and refreshing."
Even Angkatan Bersenjata, the official newspaper of the armed
forces, found the speech of importance, devoting 500 words to it
under the headline: "Natural disasters a warning from God."
As a direct result of the National Awakening Day affairs, the
army chief of staff "froze" the Fosko TNI-AD, the decision to take
effect from May 26.21 A release of the Army Information Service said
that the measure was taken because there were elements within the
Fosko TNI-AD who had used the name of the organization for political
activity and thus harmed the good name of the army. This, it said,
could create an assumption that the army stood behind these
people.22 In a follow-up move on June 21, Widodo, in his capacity as
chairman of the YKEP, announced that henceforth the Fosko TNI-AD
would be known as the "FKS Purna Yudha." In all future activity, it
was said, the body would not be permitted to reveal itself to the out-
side world. By talking "outside" at this time, Widodo observed after
his retirement several years later, the Fosko leadership had made
things "very difficult" for him as chief of staff. The president him-
self had been displeased by this affair.23 Nevertheless, Widodo
served as the lightning rod of official displeasure and the affair
proved a fairly minor setback for the retired generals in Fosko. Al-
though the name of their organization had been changed, their work
continued. "Actually it was no change at all," Sukendro said later.
"Only the name!"24 In December 1979, six months after the incident,
FKS leaders were still seeing Widodo regularly.25
The aim of the FKS was to see the system changed, to work for
a "better political infrastructure.1,26 To this end, the body organized
21.	See Merdeka, June 2, 1979, and Tempo, June 9, 1979.
22.	Tempo, June 9, 1979.
23.	Interview with General Widodo, November 17, 1981.
24.	Interview with Maj. Gen. Sukendro, December 22, 1979.
25.	Ibid. "I can see Widodo any time," Sukendro said in December
1979. "I see him regularly." See also "Surat Keputusan No:
059/YKEP/1979," June 21 , 1979, of the Yayasan Kartika Eka Pakci.
26.	Sukendro interview, December 22, 1979.100
a limited "dialogue’1 between retired TNI members. This was held in
Semarang on November 9, 1979.27
Appointment in Semarang
On November 10 (Heroes Day), 1979, President Suharto was to
travel to Akabri, the Armed Forces Academy in Magelang, Central
Java, in the company of Jusuf, Widodo, and a large group of others,
to unveil a statue of the late General Sudirman. Widodo, who, as we
have seen, had gone to some lengths to make himself available to the
retired army generals of the "Fosko" group, felt this would be a good
opportunity for prominent retired generals to meet the president to
discuss contemporary issues. To this end, he invited members of the
FKS daily board to attend the ceremony. He also made an effort to
persuade Nasution to attend. Maj. Gen. Slamet, the SPRI (personal
assistant) to Widodo, visited Nasution to invite him, as a former army
chief of staff, to be present at Magelang as Widodo’s guest. Three
prominent retired generals—Maj. Gen. Munadi, Lt. Gen. Mokoginta,
and Maj. Gen. Sukendro—made separate and consecutive visits to
Nasution to persuade him to accept the invitation. Lt. Gen. Sudirman
telephoned him to make the same plea. Each time, Nasution declined.
His "excuse" was that a formal meeting with the president would not
amount to a "struggle dialogue" (tidak akan berarti dialog
perjuangan). Only a meeting as fighters with a fighter (pejuang-
pejuang dengan pejuang), disregarding everyone's position, could
succeed.28
The retired officers in Fosko had no such qualms about a meet-
ing with Suharto, and accepted Widodo’s invitation. Then, deciding
they could kill two birds with one stone, they took the opportunity to
hold a meeting in Semarang, sixty-five kilometers north of Magelang,
on November 9, to confer with retired officers who were outside
Fosko and to inform them about Fosko and what it was planning to
do.29
The "Fosko" generals stressed later that this was in every
sense a "legal" meeting, Lt. Gen. Sugih Arto, the former attorney
27.	See "Kata Pengantar Dialog Antar Para Purnayudha TNI/ABRI
Terbatas, pada tgl. 9 November 1979 di Semarang." Also interview
with Maj. Gen. Sukendro, January 30, 1980.
28.	Genera, Nasution, written communication, November 14, 1981. In
this note, Nasution said, "I remember Nasser's method during the
first years, al, the officers of the revolution conferred each year be-
fore the anniversary of the revolution as one fighter with another
fighter."
29.	The account of the Semarang meeting is based on a joint inter-
view with Lt. Gen. Dharsono and Maj. Gen. Sukendro on July 10,
1981. Among those who sat in on part of the interview were Lt.
Gen. Jasin, Lt. Gen. Sudirman, and Genera, Hugeng.101
general, having already informed Admiral Sudomo of the plans and re-
ceived his approval to go ahead. Among those invited to the meeting
was retired Maj. Gen. Suryosumpeno, a former commander of the
Diponegoro (1964-66) and at that time chairman of the Central Java
Pepabri.30 Also invited was Maj. Gen. Munadi, the former governor
of Central Java (1966-74) and a founding member of the Fosko TNI-
AD, who had of late drifted away from the group. A number of
prominent serving army officers were also invited, including the
Siliwangi, Diponegoro and Brawijaya commanders and the commander
of Kowilhan II, Lt. Gen. Widjojo Sujono. However, these officers
failed to attend. The governor of Centra, Java, Maj. Gen. Supardjo
Rustam, also sent his regrets.
In all, about twenty-one retired army officers attended the
meeting, most of them traveling down from Jakarta by train. On the
morning of November 9 the group met at the home of Maj. Gen.
Munadi at Ungaran, a small town about twenty kilometers south of
Semarang. In the evening they continued their deliberations at the
Sky Garden Hotel in Semarang. At this point, according to Dharsono
and Sukendro, Hankam received a report that the retired generals
had gathered in Semarang to make preparations for some kind of
"takeover” when Suharto visited Akabri the following day. Although
this al, sounds decidedly odd, the report is said to have been taken
very seriously. As a result, unusually tight security measures were
enforced at the Military Academy on November 10 and the presidential
itinerary is said to have been altered at the last minute. Instead of
having lunch with the cadets as originally planned, Suharto, Jusuf,
and a number of cabinet members in the official entourage, left imme-
diately after the ceremony. Widodo was the only important member of
the group to stay behind. (Although reluctant to discuss the affair
in detail, Widodo dismisses the notion that any ’’coup” was in the air;
that, he says, was due to "a false intelligence report." The retired
officers did not intend to "make a coup" but merely wanted to convey
their views to the president.31 As in 1977, when there had been the
bizarre report that "several brigades" were "for Nasution," the lead-
ership was to prove unusually sensitive to the danger, however re-
mote, of alleged plots and manoeuverings from outside. In any
event, Nasution remains convinced that he did the right thing in de-
clining the invitation to attend the Magelang ceremony. "My guess
was right," he noted. "Evidently the president did not hold that
meeting. They did not even shake hands."32
30.	Suryosumpeno had served as military secretary to President
Sukarno in 1966-67 before being appointed inspector general of the
Ministry of Home Affairs. See Sritua Arief, "The Indonesian Military
Leaders," 2nd ed. (Jakarta: Sritua Arief Associates, 1979), pp.
334-35.
31.	Interview with Genera, Widodo, November 17, 1981.
32.	Nasution, written communication, November 14, 1981.102
"Separate Roads in the Same Direction"
Fosko, as we have seen, limited its membership to retired se-
nior army officers and dealt only with matters touching on the TNI
and its relations with society. However, the wave of concern that
had brought forth Fosko also produced a similar but more broadly
based organization—the Foundation for the Institute of Constitutional
Awareness (Yayasan Lembaga Kesadaran Berkonstitusi, YLKB). Set
up at the initiative of Nasution, this body made a point of including
representatives of all elements of the nation. The general chairman
was Dr. Mohammad Hatta, the first vice president and Co-Proclamator
of Independence, and the membership list was notable for the fact
that it brought together an almost unique combination of retired
generals and "retired" politicians. The military members of the LKB,
as it was more commonly known, including Lt. Gen. Ali Sadikin, the
popular former governor of Jakarta; Maj. Gen. Azis Saleh, a former
minister of people’s industries; General Hugeng Imam Santoso, the
former chief of the national police; Lt. Gen Mokoginta; Maj. Gen.
Munadi; and Admiral Nazir, one of the founders of the Indonesian
navy and navy chief of staff between 1946 and 1949. Among the
civilians were Mochtar Lubis, a well-known journalist and writer;
Oejeng Suwargana, a publisher and long-time acquaintance of Nasu-
tion; Dr. Anwar Haryono, an ex-Masyumi leader; Prof. Sunario, an
old PNI leader and former foreign minister; Slamet Bratanata, a
former minister of mines; Nurbani Yusuf, a lawyer and former film
star; Prof. Achmad Subardjo, a onetime foreign minister; Drs. Frans
Seda, a onetime finance minister; Nuddin Lubis, head of the PPP
fraksi (grouping) in the DPR; Sanusi Hardjadinata, a member of the
first New Order presidium and general chairman of the PDI; Sabam
Sirait, secretary general of the PDI; and Drs. Chris Siner Key Timu,
a lecturer at the Atma Jaya University. The leadership of the LKB,
it was sometimes pointed out, thus combined all the main "genera-
tions"—Dr. Hatta from the Generation of '28, Nasution from the Gen-
eration of '45, and Drs. Chris from the Generation of ’66. Students
associated with the Kampus Kuning group sat on a number of LKB
committees.33 Nasution was officially the adviser (penasehat} to the
institute.
33. The Kampus Kuning group consisted of student activists detained
in the wake of the January 1978 military crackdown. The phrase was
coined by Co,, (now Maj. Gen.) Eddy Nalapraja, at that time assistant
for intelligence at the Jakarta military command, and now a deputy
governor of metropolitan Jakarta, and referred to the detention center
where the activists were held—a newly completed barracks with a yel-
low fence. Among the more prominent members of the kampus kuning
group were Arif Rachman, a lecturer in English at the teachers col-
lege, Rawamangun, Jakarta, Dipo Alam, former chairman of the stu-
dents' council of the University of Indonesia, and Zulkarnain Jabar,
chairman of the students' council of the Syarif Hidayatullah Islamic
State University in Jakarta.103
If the idea was to bring together a number of "big names,"
then one initial obstacle was Hatta’s lingering distrust, if not dislike,
of Nasution. Hatta looked on Nasution as the man who had paved the
way for military intervention in Indonesian politics, and had never
really forgiven him for this. (Once, when the former minister of
mines, Slamet Bratanata, asked how it was that the military had come
to dominate the political stage so thoroughly, Hatta’s answer was brief
to the point of rudeness. "Don’t ask me," he said impatiently, "Ask
Nasution!"31* Hatta, aware that Nasution was the force behind the
proposed institute, was wary about its aims. However, not long after
the MPR session in March 1978, Admiral Nazir arranged for the two
men to meet at a house outside Jakarta. (It is not clear why the
meeting should have taken place on "neutral ground." Nasution, who
respected Hatta, says he was quite prepared to call on the former
vice president at his home. "I said I will go anywhere.")35 There,
in the presence of Nazir and Admiral Kamal, the two men talked for
three hours. When Nasution outlined his proposals for the lembago
and invited Hatta to be the first signatory, the older man agreed im-
mediately. When Nasution later showed him the preamble for the
LKB, Hatta did not change a word.36 This change in Hatta’s atti-
tude—from skepticism to support—was not only central to the for-
tunes of the LKB. In a broader sense, it typified the sort of reap-
praisal that was being made at the time by prominent civilians, many
of whom had hitherto shown a marked distrust of the military as a
whole. In the late 1970s, a number of civilian leaders came to accept
that significant groups within the larger military establishment were
working essentially towards the same kind of goals, and doing so not
simply because they were members of an "out" group but because
they were concerned about the way in which Indonesian society was
being shaped.
At about the same time as the Hatta-Nasution meeting, feelers
were put out to the Sultan of Yogyakarta, who in March had stood
down as vice president. The Sultan was disenchanted with Suharto,
partly because he had been excluded from the decision-making pro-
34.	Interview with Ir. Slamet Bratanata, March 25, 1982. Nasution,
who had a high regard for Hatta, offers a different explanation for
this attitude. "I did not have good relations with Hatta because of
the PRRI. He was on the other side [i.e. in the government debate
on how to handle the rebellion]." At the same time, Nasution is well
aware of Hatta’s strong antimilitary feelings. When Fosko was set up,
Nasution says, there were some people who argued that this body was
more important than the LKB because everything depended on the
TNI. "Always the TNI! And people like Hatta couldn’t listen to such
talk. They said, "It’s up to the people!" Interview with General
Nasution, March 11 , 1982.
35.	General Nasution interview, March 11 , 1982.
36.	Ibid.104
cess during his term as vice president but even more so because he
wanted to see civilians enjoying much greater authority in the gov-
ernment. Initially, the Sultan may have been attracted by the idea of
lending his name to the proposed LKB. Mochtar Lubis, who called on
him twice in the period after the MPR session, found him very much
in agreement with the aims and objectives of the institute, as did Azis
Saleh, who also discussed the matter with him at this time. However,
in the end there were two reasons why the Sultan felt he could not
join. One problem was that it might appear unseemly if he were to
join such an association immediately after stepping down as vice pres-
ident. More importantly, he is said to have felt, as a good Javanese,
that one should not confront openly. "In the Javanese context," he
told Mochtar Lubis, "it would amount to an open declaration of war
against Suharto, and I don’t think that will profit anyone—not
Suharto, not the lembaga, not the country." All the same, the Sul-
tan was "full of sympathy" for the aims of the LKB.37
Built around a Hatta-Sultan-Nasution axis, the LKB would have
been an especially influential body, one that brought together the
country’s first two vice presidents as well as the most prominent re-
tired military officer. But even without the Sultan it carried a good
deal of weight, the participation of Hatta ensuring it both attention
and respect.
Founded on June 1 , 1978, barely six months after Fosko, the
lembaga maintained close links with the grouping of ex-army "se-
niors." At the time Fosko was established, Sudirman had talked with
Nasution about whether he would join or not. Likewise, when the
LKB was started, Naustion asked Sudirman whether or not he would
join. The aims were the same, but Fosko limited itself to the TNI
while the LKB had to include all elements of the nation. It has been
suggested that "longstanding personal animosities between Nasution
and some members of Fosko" were one of the factors preventing a
merger between Fosko and the LKB.38 This was not the case. Fosko
had been set up by the army chief of staff and was obliged to limit
its membership to senior army officers. Nasution wanted a broader
approach. Moreover, he reasoned—correctly as it turned out—that,
if Fosko had been set up by a government agency, then it could be
disbanded by the same body. There was little, if any, animosity be-
tween members of the two groups. "Our formula," Nasution says,
"was 'qescheiden samengaan' [separate roads in the same direc-
tion]."^9 There were, it is true, differences of a sort over tactics.
37.	Interview with Mochtar Lubis, February 29, 1984.
38.	See Sundhaussen, "Regime Crisis in Indonesia," p. 827. This
suggestion was emphatically rejected by General Nasution (March 11,
1982), Lt. Gen. Mokoginta (March 25, 1982), and Maj. Gen. Sukendro
(March 3, 1982).
39.	General Nasution, written communication, November 14,	1981.
Maj. Gen. Sukendro, in an interview on March 3,	1982, disputed105
Sudirman and those associated with him in Fosko believed that it was
best to zero in on the army leadership because that was where power
was held; Nasution wanted a national—and not merely a military—
approach. (Although there was an "understanding” that there would
be no overlap in Fosko and LKB membership, Mokoginta was, from the
start, a member of both organizations. By late 1980, membership dis-
tinctions had become blurred and it was common to find members of
the LKB, particularly Hugeng, Slamet Bratanata, and Air Vice Mar-
shall Suyitno Sukirno, at meetings of what was, by now, the
"ex-Fosko" group.)
In keeping with its name and its proclaimed goals, the LKB
hammered repeatedly at the theme of constitutional propriety. In Au-
gust 1978, the then chairman of the LKB, Azis Saleh, met General
Darjatmo, by now the Speaker of Parliament, to discuss the current
political and social situation in the country. He was quoted after-
wards as saying that some discontent was present in the community
because of the lack of understanding of the Constitution. Darjatmo
suggested to Azis Saleh that the institution should hold a similar dia-
logue with the government. In October, a group of LKB members met
at Ali Sadikin’s house to listen to a speech of Dr. Hatta on the objec-
tive of the organization, which was to make people aware of the Con-
stitution and, by implication, the government's departure from it in
many areas. "We not only have a Constitution," Dr. Hatta said, "but
also have a consciousness of having a Constitution.1,1+0 The LKB pre-
sented no concrete program, but it reportedly intended to confine it-
self to holding dialogues and publishing periodicals.
On January 27, 1979, Dr. Hatta was to be the keynote speaker
at a panel discussion on the implementation of Article 1 of the 1945
Constitution, which declares that sovereignty is vested in the hands
of the people. However, the man who had jointly proclaimed that
Constitution on August 17, 1945, was not able to give his address;
several days before the symposium the Jakarta police asked the LKB
to "postpone" the gathering.4+1 Two weeks later, two leaders of the
institute, Dr. Azis Saleh and General Hugeng, called on Admiral
Nasution's suggestion that Fosko was set up by the government. "We
were set up by ourselves," he said, adding that Fosko had the link
with V/idodo because it was looking for an "umbrella." If Widodo had
not agreed to sponsor such a body, the retired officers would have
gone ahead on their own, as they did after the forum was "frozen."
Widodo did not form Fosko, said Sukendro, he just provided the um-
brella. There is something to be said for both the Nasution and
Sukendro explanations.
40.	See Leo Suryadinata, "Indonesia under the New Order: Problems
of Growth, Equity and Stability," in Trends in Indonesia //, ed. Leo
Suryadinata and Sharon Siddique (Singapore: Singapore University
Press, 1981).
41.	Pelita, January 25, 1979.106
Sudomo to discuss the ban. They were toid the permission to hold
the meeting would be withheld indefinitely because ’’the situation does
not allow" such a discussion.42
Despite this setback, the LKB became increasingly active in
1979. At the commemoration of the institute's first anniversary in
June, Nasution said "there are many things which are not democratic
and against Pancasila under Pancasila democracy."43 The following
month, five leaders of the group (Sunario, Sadikin, Mochtar Lubis,
Nazir Lubis [a businessman close to Nasution], and retired Admiral
Kamal) called on both the PDI and the PPP factions in the DPR as
part of a program to gather views about the application of the Consti-
tution. Leaders of the group had already met Dr. Hatta, former DPA
chairman Wilopo, and General Nasution, who, though serving as an
"adviser" to the institute seems to have chosen a role of "leading
from behind." The journey to the Parliament provided the group with
a convenient—and "constitutional"—forum to take issue with the
constitutional shortcomings of the Suharto government. In the meet-
ing with the PDI faction led by Usep Ranuwidjaja, Ali Sadikin ob-
served: "Our Republic is sick from head to foot." The situation was
so serious, he said, that "we do not know what to do, where to begin
doing things, and how to end it." Noting that the general election
law was one of the keys to the Indonesian political structure, the for-
mer Jakarta governor asked why the law (which was at that time be-
fore the Parliament) still had to be "perfected." "Perfected for
whom?" he asked rhetorically. "Perfected so that the victorious party
will be even more victorious?" In the opinion of Sadikin, there were
many "political prostitutes" in the political parties. These people
were in a formal sense party members but essentially they obeyed
others.44 At the same meeting, Sunario claimed that the government
had violated Article 11 of the Constitution concerning foreign loans
and debts. Every loan agreement had to be known to or ratified by
the DPR. It was not enough for the president to say that he was not
selling the state by contracting foreign debts. Article 11 seemed to
be irrelevant, Sunario claimed, and if in fact it were not needed any
more it should be removed from the Constitution.
The LKB delegation was received the same day by PPP faction
leaders Rachmat Mulyomiseno, Amin Iskandar, Syufri Helmi Tanjung,
and Jamaluddin Tarigan. At this meeting, Rachmat Mulyomiseno ob-
served that in 1966 everyone had been talking about the faithful im-
plementation of the 1945 Constitution; now, all of a sudden, it was
42.	Kompas, February 7, 1979.
43.	Pelita, June 2, 1979. At this meeting, the general chairman of
the LKB, Azis Saleh, said LKB representative offices and groups had
been set up in Medan, Padang, Bogor, Bandung, and other cities.
44.	Merdeka, August 22, 1979. USE.107
said that the past ten years, the period of Repelita I and II, were a
period of "transition.
In September 1979, a delegation from the LKB returned to
Senayan to meet the DPR leadership, including the Speaker, Genera,
Darjatmo, and deputy Speakers, Mashuri, K. H. Masykur, and
Mohammad Isnaeni. The discussion centered on two topics—democracy
and ABRI's dual function. Regarding the problem of democracy, the
LKB spokesman, Mokoginta, warned that, while the form of democracy
in Indonesia was already perfect from the forma, legal aspect, "we
also know that our democracy does not work." According to Moko-
ginta, what was working at that time was "the mechanism of a current
from the top to the bottom." Since nobody objected, this was re-
garded as democratic. But this was not so. If the people did not
say anything, the reasons might be that they were afraid to express
themselves or because they were "inarticulate." In his view, the
fighters who struggled for independence aspired for a democratic re-
public in which the sovereignty of the people in the shape of aspira-
tions and ideals could be realized by the leaders. The style of
democracy did vary from country to country, Mokoginta noted. But
what the democracies had in common was that the system was able to
give form to the aspirations of the masses of the people. Pancasila
democracy could be judged by whether or not the aspirations of the
people had been realized. To underscore this point, he cited the ex-
ample of the election of a bupati or a governor; often, he said, these
candidates were "dropped from above." During the dialogue, Ali
Sadikin asked whether the DPR and the government could not create
a mechanism which, while permitting ABRI’s dual function to work,
prevented people from regarding ABR, as being dominant everywhere,
in the political and in other fields. Mokoginta said that, when it was
formulated at the first and second army seminars, ABRI’s dual func-
tion was meant to bring the people to maturity in living in a constitu-
tional state and then restore this responsibility to the people. The
dual function was not intended as a device to enable ABRI to remain
in power through "artificial" domination; that would not involve
bringing people to political maturity but "gagging.1,46
This round of activity by the LKB drew some sniping from the
secretary of the Golkar faction, ,r. Sarwono Kusumaatmadja. When
the LKB critics had been in power, Sarwono claimed, they "did not
fully use the opportunity to improve things related to the establish-
ment of democracy." Generally, he said, they had been too occupied
with safeguarding their own spheres of power "and now they have re-
tired they are awake and sorry and talk about democracy.1,1+7
That sort of carping, while it may have had some basis in fact,
was hardly sufficient to deter the LKB leaders. At a five-hour meet-
45.	Berita Buona, August 23, 1979. USE.
46.	Kompas, September 25, 1979, USE.
47.	Ibid., September 29, 1979.108
ing with the Golkar faction six days later, retired officers continued
their criticism. A number of matters were raised, amongst them a
complaint by the former police chief, General Hugeng, that Kopkamtib
was unconstitutional and that police powers were not in the hands of
the police alone but also in the hands of the military police, the
Koramil (Military Precinct Command), and so on. However, it was Ali
Sadikin's criticism of the implementation of ABRI's integration with the
people which drew most comment. "If it is true that ABRI is united
with the people and stands above all groups," Sadikin asked, "why is
there still the Big Golkar Family comprising Korpri (Civil Servants
Corps), Golkar, and ABRI?" It was not stated in the Seven Pledges
or in the Soldier’s Oath that ABRI belonged to the Big Golkar Family,
he said. ABRI’s dual function had become too extensive; if the dual
function was to be continued, he stated, it must be confined to areas
where military involvement was truly necessary. With the expanding
notion of the dual function, the excesses, too, were expanding.
Now, it seemed, there were two classes, ABRI and non-ABRI, a situ-
ation that had not existed during the revolution.1+8 If all this was
very much in line with the thinking of the institute’s adviser,
Nasution, so too were Sadikin’s observations on the electoral system.
A general election based on party symbols did not make the elected
members feel dutybound to be responsible to their voters, Sadikin
charged. "We had better use the district system so that individuals
will be elected and so that when there are problems people can meet
them and demand an account."149
Six days later, the LKB held another five-hour meeting at the
DPR, this time with leaders of the ABRI faction. At this encounter,
Sadikin restated his belief that the concept of ABR, as an instrument
of the state and as a social force were overlapping and had caused
various excesses. It was necessary, he said, to discard the state-
ment that ABRI was a member of the Big Golkar Family. ABRI should
not side with any one group in society.50 During this encounter,
Azis Saleh made the point that the 1971 and 1977 elections had been
neither free nor secret, neither fair nor clean. "I have spoken with
competent people on this subject who said that there were dirty tricks
in the past general elections," he said.51
At yet another meeting with members of the PPP faction at the
end of November, LKB leaders elaborated on their earlier criticisms.
According to Azis Saleh, the existing general election law and the
procedures for forming the consultative and legislative bodies did not
yet meet the requirements of the 1945 Constitution, in particular Arti-
cle 1 which states that "sovereignty is in the hands of the people."
48.	Ibid., October 12, 1979. USE.
49.	Ibid., and Suara Karya, October 12, 1979.
50.	Merdeka, October 18, 1979. See also Pelita, and Berita Buana of
same date.
51.	Kompas, October 18, 1979. USE.109
Table III. Susunan Pengurus "Forum Studi dan Komunikasi TNI" 1278
(All of these officers were retired)
Presidium :	1.	Lt. Gen. C. P. H. Djatikusumo
	2.	Lt. Gen. Sudirman
	3.	Maj. Gen. Drs. Achmad Sukendro
Secretary General:		Lt. Gen. H. R. Dharsono
Political Department:	1.	Lt. Gen. H. A. J. Mokoginta
	2.	Brig. Gen. Daan Jahja
Economic Department:	1.	Lt. Gen. M. Jasin
	2.	Brig. Gen. Agus Prasmono
Social Department:	1.	Maj. Gen. Munadi
	2.	Maj. Gen. Drs. Iskandar Ranuwihardjo
Cultural Department:	1.	Maj. Gen. Brotosewoyo
	2.	Brig. Gen. Broto Hamidjojo
Legal Department:	1.	Lt. Gen. Sugih Arto
	2.	Maj. Gen. Muamil Effendy S.H.
Members:	1.	Col. Alex Kawilarang
	2.	Col. Chandra Hasan
	3.	Maj. Gen. Harun Sohar
	4.	Col. Sukanda Bratamenggala
SOURCE: Susunan Pengurus: "Forum Studi dan Komunikasi TNI."110
Improvements had to be sought without let-up, and this was the task
of the DPR. "If the DPR can do nothing," said Mokoginta, "they had
better pack up and go home."52 If in the past appointments had had
to be made because there had not yet been a general election, Azis
Saleh said, then the notion of appointments had become institutional-
ized. In accordance with Articles 1 and 27 of the Constitution, there
should be no discrimination or special rights in a general election or
in obtaining seats in the DPR/DPRDs (provincial representative as-
semblies); all members should be elected. The candidates of the TNI
as a social force, he said, could always participate in a general elec-
tion under the district system.
Anxious to establish their legitimacy, the New Order leaders
had gone out of their way to stress a fundamental commitment to the
1945 Constitution. At the same time, they had been compelled by
political realities to ignore and ride roughshod over many fundamental
provisions of the Constitution and to go on doing so over a sustained
period. Nasution, who had pushed for a return to the 1945 Constitu-
tion and who found much to criticize in Suharto's government, was
not slow in making the most of this contradiction. The Lembaga
Kesadaran Berkonstitusi he created had the advantage of being able
to attack the government and its constitutional shortcomings and to do
so in a constitutional—and therefore "acceptable"—manner, thus mak-
ing it difficult for the government to retaliate.
Although Nasution was listed merely as an adviser to the LKB,
he was, in fact, very much more than this. Nasution was the focal
point for those associated with the institute, and the membership list
included the names of a number of his friends and associates. Oejeng
Suwargana was a long time Cose associate of Nasution;53 Dr. Azis
Saleh and Admiral Nazir had been the first two Indonesian military of-
ficers to achieve cabinet rank when, on Nasution’s initiative, they
had been appointed minister of health and minister of navigation re-
spectively in the 1957 Karya Cabinet (Work Cabinet) of Ir. Djuanda
Kartawidjaja. In 1954, Azis Saleh had been one of the founders of
the League of Upholders of Indonesian Independence (Ikatan
Pendukung Kemerdekaan Indonesia, IPKI), the political "movement"
set up on Nasution’s initiative. The writings of Nasution, Oejeng
Suwargana, Azis Saleh, and Nazir were especially prominent in the
booklets and pamphlets issued by the LKB and reflected a similar out-
look on constitutional questions.
It is tempting to see a connecting thread running from the ac-
tivities of the IPKI of the late 1950s to the LKB of the late 1970s and
there is more perhaps than a superficial resemblance between the two
bodies. Founded at a time when there was growing disenchantment
over the corruption and ineptitude of the political parties, IPKI
brought together a number of fairly prominent officers and civilians.
52.	Ibid., November 30, 1979. USE.
53.	See above ch. 3, n. 7.111
According to a manifesto of the grouping, Indonesia had experienced
one crisis after another in the years since independence and the aspi-
rations of the people had not been realized. The solution, the mani-
festo said, was a return to the spirit of the Proclamation and the 1945
Constitution. IPKI sought a stronger form of government, but one
which would allow for greater regional autonomy and find an enlight-
ened solution to the problem of continuing regional disturbances, the
simplification of state agencies, the elimination of corruption, and a
greater degree of army autonomy.5I+ As Sundhaussen has pointed
out, Nasution saw IPKI drawing its electoral support essentially from
military men and their families, veterans, West Java, and the Outer
Islands. Some such support was forthcoming: in West Java, the
Outer Island military commander, Col. Alex Kawilarang, provided
transport and even money for IPKI campaigners. However, the
group’s manifesto alienated ethnic Javanese, and IPKI, coming face to
face with an obstructionist government, fared dismally in the 1955
elections.55 Although IPKI had played a fairly significant role in
paving the way for Guided Democracy, most of its leaders later came
to oppose what they saw as Sukarno's attempt to eliminate democracy
altogether. In March 1960, largely on the initiative of IPKI, a Liga
Demokrasi (Democratic League) was established, ostensibly to protest
against the dissolution of Parliament and to demand the preservation
of the parliamentary system, but more particularly to counter the
growing power of the PKI. The driving force behind the Liga
Demokrasi was Nasution's intelligence chief Col. Sukendro, a Siliwangi
officer who, as we have seen, would later play a central role in
Fosko, an organization with parallel aims to those of the LKB. Al-
though Nasution had remained at arm's length from the league (if only
to avoid Sukarno's wrath), he is thought to have lent active support
to Sukendro at that time.
There were important differences, however, between IPKI and
the LKB. For one thing, Nasution and the other officers who had
participated in IPKI were now retired and in no position to bring
anything other than moral pressure to bear on issues. For another,
the LKB was in no sense a political party, with a manifesto, pro-
grams, and candidates; it was a foundation which merely sought the
"pure" application of the 1945 Constitution.
As we have seen, the LKB brought together a wide range of
people and a broad spectrum of political opinion. This made for odd
bedfellows, the mingling of ex-Masyumi figures and army officers who
had crushed the 1958 rebellion being in itself unique. On one level,
this could be—and was—presented as evidence of an impressive and
growing alignment of forces opposed to the Suharto government. At
another level, however, it could be seen as a brittle and essentially
temporary alliance. The members of the LKB were indeed drawn from
a wide range of groupings. But while they might agree on the sort
54.	See Sundhaussen, Road to Power, pp. 89-90 and p. 125.
55.	Ibid., p. 90.112
of things they opposed, their weakness was that they remained as di-
vided as ever over the sort of government they would like to see in
Indonesia.CHAPTER FIVE
ARMY PROPOSES, PALACE DISPOSES
It is appropriate to distract the people's attention from
political problems and ideological exclusiveness to efforts
of national development. For that reason it is necessary
to limit the activities of the political parties to the district
level only.
Lt. Gen. Ali Murtopo (1972)1
No government is as strong as this one. It controls
everything, from below to the highest levels. The ques-
tion is whether we continue like this in the future or
whether we make improvements. I think improvements are
necessary—to make the system more democratic. We
should reduce ABRI's involvement, give more chance to
the people. The situation at present is not good. I have
always recommended to the president that he make an im-
provement.
General Widodo (1981)2
Soon after his installation as army chief of staff in January
1978, Widodo called for a copy of the Seskoad paper. The sentiments
he found therein were very much in line with his own thinking, and
within a short time he had set up a committee, under his deputy, Lt.
Gen. Poniman, to discuss the matter in detail with all groups in the
army. The ostensible aim of the exercise was to produce a paper on
the Hankamrata (Total People's Defense) Concept. However, the com-
mittee's more immediate task was to formulate clearly the dwifungsi
doctrine of the army.3
The Widodo paper, like the Seskoad paper before it, was writ-
ten in its entirety by Brig. Gen. Abdulkadir Besar. And, not sur-
prisingly, it reflected the sort of thinking that had emerged during
1.	Ali Murtopo, "Some Basic Considerations in 25-year Development,"
The Indonesian Quarterly 1 (October 1972): 20.
2.	Interview with General Widodo, November 17, 1981.
3.	Ibid. Widodo noted in this interview that the paper gave equal
attention to the Hankamrata and the dwifungsi. However, he con-
ceded that the section dealing with the dwifungsi was more important.
113114
the Seskoad deliberations on this topic. However, the Widodo paper
naturally carried a lot more weight. The Poniman committee included
not only members of Seskoad but representatives from all other ele-
ments in the army as well. Officers from the intelligence, opera-
tional, and territorial branches sat in on the committee sessions and
were asked for their opinions. The governor of Lemhannas (National
Defense Institute), Lt. Gen. Sajidiman Surjohadiprodjo, and his suc-
cessor, Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono, also contributed to the document.k
Widodo, playing a crucial “brokerage1’ role, also sought—and listened
to—the views of the retired officers in Fosko. At the same time, he
sought the views of a number of prominent civilians, in particular
academics from the University of Indonesia, the Bandung Institute of
Technology, and Gajah Mada University in Yogyakarta.4 5 During this
process, Abdulkadir was obliged to accent some aspects and play
down others. But the underlying principles remained the same.
As we have seen, Abdulkadir had, during the first half of
1977, reformulated the “Hankamrata Doctrine," an exercise that in-
volved gathering together the existing material on this topic and set-
ting it out more systematically. During the second half of 1977 and
the early part of 1978 he had written the Seskoad paper on the dwi-
fungsi. The Widodo paper was essentially a fusion of these two docu-
ments, with perhaps 80 percent of the material being incorporated
without change. After a two-page preface and some introductory re-
marks of equal length, the army paper incorporated six closely typed
pages of material from the Seskoad dwifungsi paper.6 This included
the section, centrally important to Abdulkadir’s argument, asserting
that Indonesian cultural values are posited on familial principles and
that an ABRI man is responsible not just for the defense of the state
but for developing, inter alia, its economic, cultural, and political
life.7 The army paper discarded a six-page discourse in the original
paper concerning “The Position of Man in Pancasila." But the follow-
ing twenty-page section was taken over, with only minor rewording
and rearrangement, from the earlier study. A new three-page section
4.	Interview with General Nasution, July 7,	1980. Lt. Gen.
Sajidiman and Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono had views that tended to be in
harmony with those of the teaching staff at Seskoad and the retired
officers in Fosko and the LKB. They were, in this sense, more
broadly in sympathy with those in the “principled" group. Interview
with Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono, July 23, 1981. Sutopo Juwono, who
had been appointed ambassador to the Netherlands in 1974 following
the Malari Affair, returned to Indonesia in September 1978. He took
up his new post as governor of Lemhannas in November 1978.
5.	Interview with General Widodo, November 17, 1981.
6.	See Dwifungsi ABRI: (Kensep 1979) (Departemen Pertahanan
Keamanan, Markas Besar, Tentara Nasional Indonesia Angkatan
Darat), pp. 5-11. (Henceforth “Widodo paper.”)
7.	Ibid., p. 6.115
was added setting out "Seven Principles Concerning the Implementa-
tion of ABRI's Dual Function,” as was a page on "ABRI's Mission as a
Social Force.”
Although the earlier sections of the army paper focused on the
philosophical basis of the dwifungsi, the seven principles outlined in
the new section implicitly limited the scope of a doctrine which might
otherwise have been thought to have sanctioned an almost unre-
stricted military involvement in nonmilitary affairs. The first of the
seven principles was that "the attitude and behavior of ABRI in all
situations must always reflect a populist [kerakyatan] and knightly
[kesatriaan] nature."8
A populist orientation was defined as one which, while taking
account of ABRI's aims, was directed towards the achievement of the
aspirations of the people. A knightly nature meant that, during the
struggle to shape the aspirations of the people, ABRI "dares to admit
its own mistakes and dares to admit the correctness of others." The
second principle was that "ABRI has always to be one [manunggal]
with the people." The moment that this was no longer the case ABRI
would lose its identity as an army of fighters and with that its moral
basis for acting as a social force as well as its basis as the core of
the Hankamrata. To guarantee the oneness of ABRI and the people,
ABRI had unhesitatingly to put into practice a third principle. This
was that "what is best for the people is best for ABRI."9 In order
to be aware of the people's aspirations members of ABRI had to live
in the same way as the people. Hence the fourth principle, that
"ABRI must desire and be able to live according to the living condi-
tions of the people." If members of ABRI lived more luxuriously than
the people, the armed forces would become divorced from the people
and lose their strength. The fifth principle was that the "Sapta
Marga rejects the notion that ABRI is a dead instrument [of the
state], just as it does not permit ABRI to become a dictator." The
sixth principle was that "ABRI is above all groups in society"
(mengatasi segenap golongan yang ada dalam masyarakat]. Only in
such a position, the document said, could ABRI function as a stabi-
lizer and dynamizer of the life of society and the state. A seventh
principle, said to derive from the idea of a state based on familial
principles (negara kekeluargaan), was that "in solving the problems
of society and also of defense and security ABRI has to use the inte-
grative method of thinking."
In the second of these two additions the paper made the point
that the mission of ABR, as a social force is to give selflessly of its
social capacity and ability in the struggle to realize the national aspi-
rations, as outlined in the preamble to the 1945 Constitution. This
struggle, it said, is not implemented by ABRI alone but by various
other social forces, including political parties, functional group
8.	ibid., p. 30.
9.	Ibid., p. 31.116
organizations, provincial groups, professional groups, and other
people’s organizations. ’’Therefore ABRI is merely one social force
among so many others that fights for the realization of the national
aspirations. This means that all social forces are in the same position
as a political infrastructure.” (italics added)10 The next five pages,
including sections on ’’ABRI's Credentials” and "The Nine Principles
of the Implementation of ABRI’s Function as a Social Force," were
taken straight from the Seskoad document.
A lengthy section on "ABRI as a Defense Force," which spans
nearly thirty pages, incorporated Abdulkadir’s original paper on the
Hankamrata. The only change was the inclusion of an additional point
to the original "Six Principles Concerning the Implementation of
ABRI’s Role as a Defense Force."11 The addition, suggested by two
Fosko leaders (Djatikusumo and Sukendro), is as follows: "The gov-
ernment must be capable of providing for the welfare of the people,
which includes the provision of social justice for all the Indonesian
people."12
This sentence expressed the feeling among certain retired offi-
cers in Fosko that people would go to war to defend the state if they
felt that the government was committed to their welfare and was doing
all it could to guarantee social justice. Abdulkadir, who shared this
opinion, made this the first of the seven principles in his revised
formulation.13 (The wording of the sentence, it might be noted, is
strikingly similar to that introduced by the Committee on Army Doc-
trine in 1958; Mokoginta, a prominent member of Fosko, had served
as chairman of the earlier committee.)
After incorporating some additional material from the Seskoad
paper, the army document set out an important new section on "The
Future of ABRI's Dual Function." This not only foresaw a progres-
sive withdrawal of ABRI members from the executive branch of the
government but suggested that this process must be realized during
the 1980s.
ABRI's dual function, the paper declared, is an integral part of
the system of the participation of the people within the "familial
state," and in essence its existence is fully guaranteed. In its
capacity as a social force, the document said, ABRI participates in
determining the nation's course. This meant that ABRI shares politi-
cal responsibility, and, as a defense and security force, is unable to
carry out coup d'etats or create military juntas. With this concept, it
said, the continuous existence of a democratic political system is
guaranteed. The document then referred back to the fourth and fifth
principles on the realization of ABRI's function as a social force.
10.	Ibid., p.	33.
11.	Ibid., p.	65.
12.	Ibid.	
13.	Interview	with Brig. Gen. Abdulkadir Besar, March 12, 1982117
One of these principles is that the "principal" participation of ABRI
as a social force—and this, it stressed, is a role that is everlast-
ing—is within the institutions giving expression to the people's sover-
eignty and within the legislative bodies. The second is that ABRI's
participation within the executive branch of government is only to
stabilize and dynamize that branch, and can only be justified, the
document suggested, if one were to estimate that the Indonesian polit-
ical system would gradually become stable in the future, with each of
the various parts fulfilling its own function. Under increasingly
stable conditions, it said, the political system "no longer needs the
help of the stabilizing and dynamizing efforts of ABRI."14 ABRI’s
dual function, it added, could automatically adapt itself to a changing
situation.
In the first decade of the New Order, the document continued,
the role of ABRI as a social force was very prominent. This was
only natural as that was a time of transition from a "totalitarian" life
during the Old Order to a democratic life with aspirations to follow
Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution. During this transition period
ABRI had been called on to carry out the role of stabilization and
dynamization; "If the New Order succeeds in this decade, then it can
be estimated that in the second decade, from the early 1980s on-
wards, the social function of ABRI will only be realized within the in-
stitution possessing the people's sovereignty and in the legislative in-
stitution. 1,15
In the future, it said, ABRI saw itself more as a defense and
security force, dedicating itself to maintaining the territory and all
its contents in the context of total defense. The result of this—
national security—automatically contributed to elevating the people's
welfare. This did not mean that ABRI's social function was erased or
ignored, because the duty to build the territory, a duty that had be-
come ABRI's responsibility in its capacity as a social force, was real-
ized through those institutions which gave expression to the people's
sovereignty and through the legislative bodies, both at the national
and regional levels.
The basic theme of the Widodo paper, then, was that ABRI, in
accordance with an historical process, had emerged from the people
and that the people were the source of its power and inspiration.
More important still, the paper stressed that the armed forces were
based on the Pancasila, and that they were pledged to uphold the
letter of the Constitution. The armed forces, the paper said, must
never ally themselves with only one group in society, but must em-
brace the entire population. If the TNI relied on any single group in
society it would endanger both its unity and its identity. (This in a
sense was a triumph for Nasution's ideas; it would be hard to imagine
a formulation that more closely resembled his political thinking.)
14.	"Widodo paper," p. 74.
15.	Ibid., p. 75.118
Equally important the paper envisaged a great reduction in ABRI's in-
volvement in nonmilitary affairs during the 1980s, with civilians re-
gaining effective control over the executive branch of government.
This was a major departure from the thinking of those around Su-
harto. At the time the paper was written there were more than
20,000 ABRI men serving in a kerkaryaan capacity, the bulk of them
in executive rather than legislative positions. Although a number of
officers associated with the ruling group accepted the need to reduce
the number of military men serving outside the Defense Ministry,
there was nothing to suggest they favored such a wholesale cutback.
In this sense, the Widodo paper addressed two central issues in the
emerging debate over the army's role in Indonesian society: the ques-
tion of ABRI's relations with other social and political groups, and
the question of the extent of military involvement in nominally civilian
institutions.
In the course of a number of committee meetings during the
year, particularly in the last two of September and October 1978,
various officers pointed to the political difficulties that would inevita-
bly flow from any attempt by the army to play a purely neutral role.
On one occasion, a general who was a member of the committee made
the point that, if the government were to adhere to the principles set
forth in the document, the army could not fulfil, its "mission" to make
Golkar win the 1982 genera, election. The answer, as formulated by
a key member of the "principled" group, was, in effect, "That's not
our problem. Our job is to safeguard the identity of the TNI and.
through that, the Constitution and the ideas of the Revolution."18
When a similar objection was made in the final meeting, another gen-
era, said that it was up to the people—not the army—to decide who
won the election.17 While some of the more "pragmatic" officers were
arguing that it would be electoral suicide for the army to stand above
al, groups, Widodo was of the opinion that the existing system only
served to repress legitimate political expression. As he noted after
his retirement: "You must give the political parties a chance to take
part in the system. Also the people. You must give them a chance
to take part in the system. Otherwise there are more people outside
the system. It is very dangerous.1,18 Criticisms were coming from
the people and from intellectuals, and eventually the intellectuals
would have their roots in the people: ", think we must listen to the
voices.1,19
This, it need hardly be said, did not reflect the thinking of
those in power. Indeed, the suggestion that the army would
endanger both its unity and identity if it relied on any one group in
society was a barely veiled criticism of the policies of Suharto and his
16.	Interview with Genera, Nasution, May 10, 1979.
17.	Confidential communication.
18.	Widodo interview, November 17, 1981.
19.	Ibid.119
associates. Eventually, someone decided that things had gone far
enough. In October 1978, shortly before the last meeting of the com-
mittee (one chaired by Widodo himself), an anonymous single-page
pamphlet was circulated at Hankam and Seskoad. This claimed that
the ultimate aim of the reform-minded group—it mentioned Abdulkadir
as the "konseptornya"—was the abolition of the dwifungsi doctrine, a
fairly bizarre claim in view of his well-known attachment to the views
of Nasution. Because the pamphlet went on to note that Abdulkadir
had been the secretary general of the MPRS at the time Nasution had
been the chairman of that body, it gave rise to speculation that the
principal target of the attack was Nasution himself. According to
Nasution, it is inconceivable that anyone but ’’the security people”
could have circulated such a pamphlet.20
Abdulkadir reported the existence of the pamphlet to Widodo at
a meeting at the latter's house on the night of October 16. He
claimed, inter alia, that its author was "against the original identity
of the army” and was speaking on behalf of those with a vested in-
terest in the status quo. Widodo shared this opinion and told
Abdulkadir not to worry about the claims.21 At this meeting,
Abdulkadir warned Widodo that, although the committee he had estab-
lished was engaged in an internal discussion about army matters, it
was necessary, given the prevailing political atmosphere, to be clear
about the way these actions would be viewed in certain quarters; the
ruling group, he pointed out, were not likely to take kindly to the
implementation of the doctrines formulated by Widodo. The army chief
of staff responded that that did not matter: "Those who are unwilling
to discuss the dwifungsi of ABRI scientifically," he said, "are people
who misuse the dwifungsi to preserve their own power." Abdulkadir
agreed with this and noted that "as a staff officer I have warned you
that it is a political deed."22
The Widodo paper, which ran to seventy-five pages, was ap-
proved the following day at a complete plenary session of the army
general staff. Among those present were a number of prominent
"outsiders," both active and retired. These included Sajidiman,
Sutopo Juwono, the four-man Fosko "daily board" (Djatikusumo,
Sudirman, Dharsono, and Sukendro), plus Mokoginta and Daan Jahja,
both of whom were ordinary members of Fosko.23 Following an expo-
20.	Nasution interview. May 10, 1979. The role of the intelligence
section was confirmed by a confidential source.
21.	Interview with Brig. Gen. Abdulkadir Besar, March 5,	1982.
Although Widodo took a "strong" line in supporting the document,
Nasution believes, he also had "good tactics." The document, the
chief of staff had argued, was not made by him personally but had
grown from within the army itself. Nasution interview. May 10, 1979.
22.	Abdulkadir Besar interview, March 5, 1982.
23.	Interviews with General Widodo (November 17, 1981), Maj. Gen.
Sukendro (July 25, 1981), Lt. Gen. Dharsono (November 12, 1981),120
sition by Abdulkadir, a lively discussion took place about ABRI's role
in society. At one stage, Sajidiman raised the question of whether
the armed forces were a tool of the government or a component of the
state. If they were a tool of the government, he said, they would be
obliged to follow every dictate of the government of the day. The
unanimous answer of those present was that ABRI was a component of
the state, not a tool of the government.24 The truth of this asser-
tion, Abdulkadir felt, had been borne out by experience. History
had shown that on four occasions the TNI had been loyal to the ideals
of the state, not to the government of the day, a point made in both
the Seskoad and Widodo papers.25 In December 1948, after the cap-
ture of the Republican leaders by the Dutch, General Sudirman had
said that "with or without the government, the TNI goes on with the
struggle.” At the time of the October 17 Affair in 1952, the army
leaders had reacted against what they had seen as an attempt by Par-
liament—a Parliament which included representatives of the ’’puppet
states” created by the Dutch—to send them back to the barracks, a
course that was against the aspirations of the army. In 1959, the
army had pushed the government to return to the 1945 Constitution.
Finally, in 1965 Suharto had refused to subject himself to President
Sukarno when the latter, contrary to the wishes of the TNI leader-
ship, had sought to defend the PKI. The purist might well object
that this was a fairly dangerous sort of doctrine, one which left it up
to the army leadership to decide when and how to obey the orders of
the government of the day. And it was fitting perhaps that the men
who endorsed this notion—and these were, after all, those of a more
principled cast of mind, not the Suharto hard-liners —should have
done so on the 26th anniversary of the incident in which Nasution’s
troops trained their guns on the presidential palace.
In any event, at the October 17 meeting it was agreed that the
army owed its loyalty to the state, not to the government of the day.
This established, Sajidiman asked what ABRI’s attitude should be if
the PPP or the PDI were to emerge victorious at the next general
election. The answer, as formulated by Mokoginta and endorsed by
the gathering, was that it did not matter which group won the elec-
tion; if either of the "opposition” political parties won, it was simply
a consequence of the democratic process. There needed to be a na-
tional consensus, Mokoginta said, that ABRI would be loyal to which-
ever group came to power, the only caveat being that the Republic of
Indonesia must continue to be based on the 1945 Constitution and on
the Pancasila. If anyone sought to change the philosophical basis of
the state, he said, the army must take prompt action against it.
and Brig. Gen. Abdulkadir Besar (March 5, 1982). Widodo invited
the nonactive officers to his office on two separate occasions—once to
discuss the army's role in society and once to discuss the Hankamrata
concept.
24.	Interview with Brig. Gen. Abdulkadir Besar, March 5, 1982.
25.	See "Seskoad paper,” p. 35, and "Widodo paper," p. 27.121
At the end of the meeting, late on the afternoon of October 17,
Sudirman expressed the hope that ’’with this conception we can re-
store the original dwifungsi.1,26 Widodo was in complete sympathy
with the views outlined in the army paper and with those expressed
at the meeting. "We cannot afford to sacrifice the dignity of the
army,” he said, "because if we do the army will be undermined.”27
It is interesting to note—and understandable perhaps—that the
key "military professionals’’28 who had been dismissed or displaced in
the wake of the Malari Affair in 1974—Sumitro, Sutopo Juwono,
Sajidiman, and Charis Suhud—believed, albeit with varying degrees of
enthusiasm, that ABRI should return to its "pure" ideals. "When I
read the draft [of the Widodo paper]," Sutopo Juwono noted in an in-
terview, "I absolutely agreed with what was written there. This, in
my opinion, is what we call the pure ideal of the dwifungsi, of the
role of the armed forces."29 As we have seen, Sajidiman felt pre-
cisely the same way. Charis Suhud, according to his close asso-
ciates, shared these views, although as chief of staff for functional
affairs he was in no position to express them. (Instead, Charis
Suhud personified the dilemma of many senior New Order officers,
being caught between the demands of his conscience and the need to
implement the orders he received from his superiors.) Sumitro’s po-
sition was more complex and was, in fact, something of a "working
compromise" which fell between these two poles. On the one hand,
Sumitro was concerned about a number of the "excesses" of military
rule. He claimed that he had urged Suharto, as early as 1971, to
dissolve Kopkamtib30 and said that he felt that the government could
afford to scale back on the number of officers serving in a kekaryaan
(nonmilitary) capacity. On the other hand, Sumitro had many of the
characteristics of a New Order "pragmatist." Though less rigid in
his thinking than Suharto, he was very much the "commander" type
26.	Ibid.
27.	Interview with General Widodo, November 17, 1981.
28.	The term "military professionals" was introduced by Crouch.
See Army and Politics in Indonesia, p. 317.
29.	Interview with Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono, July 23, 1981.
30.	Interview with Genera! Sumitro, February 28, 1981 . In an inter-
view (March 4, 1981), Admiral Sudomo refrained from either confirm-
ing or denying that Sumitro had been keen in the early 1970s to see
Kopkamtib disbanded, although, in stressing that he (Sudomo) had
always felt that such an approach was ill-considered, appeared to
concede that the suggestion had been made. Such a suggestion is
not as implausible as it may sound. Although Kopkamtib was an im-
portant Sumitro power base, he also enjoyed considerable influence in
his capacity as deputy commander of the armed forces. At the time,
he was actively seeking to disengage himself from day-to-day
Kopkamtib business and involve himself more in his more purely army
activities.122
and saw the need for strong and effective government; he might have
been expected to maintain many of the practices of the Suharto
group, at least in the short run, were he to be in a position to make
key decisions. What set these former "military professionals" apart
from some of their more outspoken retired colleagues was that they
were still playing (or, in Sumitro’s case, hoping to play) a role in
the government, albeit in a somewhat reduced capacity. In view of
this, they were in no position to air publicly any misgivings they may
have had. Besides, they still felt themselves bound by certain ties
to the ruling group. Whatever the reservations of men like Sutopo
Juwono, they still considered themselves setiakawan (bound by a feel-
ing of solidarity) with the New Order leaders. According to Sutopo
Juwono: "Up to now, the situation is not like 1965. President
Suharto, besides his shortcomings, also has his achievements. . . .
And even if we don't like Suharto personally or something like that
our moral is setiakawan. This spirit of friendship is still existing be-
cause we are from the same generation and we had also experiences
between life and death and so on. It's still existing in our mind."31
Partly because of this and partly because they did not favor
the idea of ABRI airing its dirty linen in public, these officers
tended to be circumspect in their comments, to criticize, if they criti-
cized at all, in an oblique and Javanese manner. They were, in some
ways, in a half-way house, in contrast to Sukendro and Sudirman,
who had never been members of the New Order, and Nasution and
Dharsono, who had not belonged to the group around Suharto.
Sumitro, Sutopo Juwono, and the others had been key members of
this group in the early years of the New Order and had only been
pushed aside after their clash in the early '70s with the "political"
and "financial" generals around Suharto, most notably Ali Murtopo.
Now, in the early 1980s, Sutopo Juwono and Sajidiman were once more
aligned, at least in spirit, with those who put principle above prag-
matism. However, Suharto and the pragmatists around him—Ali
Murtopo, Benny Murdani, Amir Machmud, Sudomo, and Yoga Sugama—
commanded the heights of the political system and, though not espe-
cially numerous, they were solidly dug in.
What was even more significant was the degree of support for
"principled" thinking amongst senior officers who were not only on
the active list but occupying some of the most important command
positions. As we have seen, the army chief of staff believed there
was a need to reduce ABRI's involvement in society and make the
system more open and democratic. These views were shared by the
minister of defense, General Jusuf, who, since his appointment in
March 1978, had been making repeated reference to the importance of
ABRI-people unity and to the fact that ABRI must stand above all
groups in society. Later, as we shall see, some doubts came to be
expressed about Jusuf's commitment to the sort of fairly fundamental
reforms he so frequently espoused, or at any rate to his willingness
31. Interview with Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono, July 23, 1981 .123
to endanger his position by pushing openly for such reforms in the
face of Suharto's somewhat inflexible views on the matter. Neverthe-
less, his statements in the late 1970s had a ring of conviction to many
people and, when in May 1979 he issued every member of the armed
forces with a small blue pocket book on the military's role in society,
the doctrines he set forth could hardly be faulted by those committed
to reform. (Perhaps the only exception was a statement that ABRI's
relations with the political parties, Golkar, the Veterans' Association,
and other social forces should be implemented on the basis of the
eleven principles of ABRI leadership, one of the most important of
which was tut wuri handayani. As Crouch has noted, this Javanese
phrase refers to the guidance given by a parent to a child learning
to walk, where the parent does not actually support the child but is
always ready to save him from falling.32)
32. See ABRI Sebagoi Kekuatan Sosiol dan Pokok-Pokok Kebi-
jaksanaan Da lam Rangka Memelihara dan Meningkatkan Kemanunggalan
ABRI Dengan Rakyat (Jakarta: Departemen Pertahanan Keamanan,
1979).
The Jusuf "blue book" was divided into two sections. Part
One, written by Brig. Gen. (Hon.) Nugroho Notosusanto, the head of
the ABRI History Department, at the behest of Lt. Gen. Charis
Suhud, the chief of staff for functional affairs, dealt with ABRI as a
social force and made a number of interesting points. One was that
as a social force "ABRI is in the same position as political parties and
Golkar, neither being higher than the other." ABRI always regarded
the political parties and Golkar as fellow freedom fighters and would
always work shoulder to shoulder towards the success of development
efforts to create a solid and dynamic national stability, as well as
promote national resilience. ABRI was responsible for guiding and
developing Pepabri, the association of ex-servicemen, the document
went on, and also had a responsibility to guide (individual) veterans.
As noted, the booklet said that ABRI's relations with the political
parties, Golkar, and other social forces should be implemented on the
basis of the eleven principles of ABRI leadership, the most important
of which were tut wuri handayani, ing ngarsa sung tulada, and ing
madya mangun karsa. The "blue book" also devoted some attention to
the question of kekaryaan ABRI, the appointment of military men to
nonmilitary positions, and stressed the measures that should be taken
to avoid excesses in this area. Amongst other things, it said the
placement of ABRI karyawan (functionaries) should always be done
selectively, according to qualitative requirements, and not be just a
channelling of personnel into comfortable positions. Part Two of the
Jusuf "blue book," which dealt with the matter of ABRI-people unity,
was prepared by a committee chaired by a former deputy assistant for
territorial affairs.
Suharto used the phrase tut wuri handayani in this context in a
speech on Armed Forces Day, 1974. See Crouch, Army and Politics
in Indonesia, p. 272.124
As we have seen, ’’principled” thinking also existed amongst
members of the teaching staff at the various service staff and com-
mand schools and enjoyed the support of both the outgoing and and
incoming governor of the National Defense Institute. There is evi-
dence that the commander of Kowilhan II (and later chief of staff of
Kopkamtib), Lt. Gen. Widjojo Sujono, shared these views, and that
General Surono Reksodimedjo, although not in any sense politically
minded, felt much the same way. Even General Darjatmo, in the view
of some of his senior colleagues, was of a similar opinion, although in
his case an overriding loyalty to Suharto worked against this to some
extent.33
This was, in a sense, the first formal reassessment of the
army's position since the third army seminar in Bandung in 1972.3U
However, the paper formalized by Widodo was different, insofar as it
emerged not from a seminar but from official general staff meetings.
It was also different in that it focused on broad philosophical ques-
tions; the accent in the two post-Sukarno army seminars, particularly
the second army seminar in 1966, had been more on political affairs.
The Widodo paper provided striking proof that the army "body”
was not necessarily in agreement with the policies that were being
pursued by the Suharto/palace/intelligence community "head." That
this should have occurred while Widodo, a longtime associate of
Suharto, was chief of staff made the development all the more awk-
33.	Confidential communication. General Darjatmo retired in 1980.
Other reform-minded generals, it was said, included Lt. Gen. Solichin
G. P.; Maj. Gen. Achir, the inspector general of the army; Maj.
Gen. Slamet Danusudirjo, deputy chairman of Bappenas (National
Planning Agency) for planning, program, and implementation; and Lt.
Gen. Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, the inspector general of the Department of
Foreign Affairs. A number of officers closely associated with General
Jusuf, including the chief of the national police, General Awaluddin
Djamin, were likewise interested in purifying the existing system.
34.	Abdulkadir, according to Nasution, "was also the key personality
in that seminar." Interview, July 7, 1980. As we have seen, three
major army seminars have been held over the past twenty years. At
the first seminar, which was chaired by the late General Yani in April
1965, the army produced a doctrine that declared, inter alia, that the
armed forces had a dual role as both a "military force" and a
"social-political force." As a "social-political force," the army’s activ-
ities covered "the ideological, political, social, economic, cultural and
religious fields." (See Crouch, Army and Politics in Indonesia, pp.
24-25.) However, the army doctrine at that time was closely inter-
woven with the political thinking of the late President Sukarno. At
the second army seminar in 1966, there was a "total correction"; all
vestiges of Sukarnoism were wiped from the slate, and the army re-
turned, in theory at least, to its original doctrine. The third army
seminar was held in Bandung in 1972 at a time when General Umar
Wirahadikusumah was army chief of staff.125
ward for the ruling group. (There were, of course, two sides to
this coin. It was precisely because Widodo had been close to Suharto
that he was able to speak frankly to the president.)
In theory, the army was obliged to be loyal to the principles
set forth in the Widodo paper. In practice, the document had little
impact. The position of army chief of staff, all powerful during the
first two decades of independence, had been emasculated by the re-
structuring of the armed forces in 1969. All real power now lay with
the president and with the ruling generals at Hankam. And with the
possible exception of Jusuf,35 they were not persuaded by the argu-
ment that the army should return to the barracks. The Widodo paper
was distributed to commanders with an instruction from the chief of
staff to be loyal to the principles contained therein. But in reality,
as Nasution noted in July 1980, "you also have other instructions."
There is a dualism in the standpoint of the military man.
On the one hand there is the paper of General Widodo
and the blue booklet of General Jusuf—to be above all
groupings, that ABRI is of the whole nation. On the
other hand, there is the statement of the president him-
self that the army is still part of the big Golkar family.
These are two strong poles. One is from the line of com-
mand and the other is from the government. Really, they
are contrary. But [in Indonesia] if there is a contradic-
tion you usually keep smiling and don’t talk directly
about it.36
In theory, the Widodo paper had had a free run from the time
it was issued on October 17, 1978, until the president signalled a
very different approach in his speech at Pekanbaru in March 1980.
In practice, Admiral Sudomo had, almost since the beginning and al-
most certainly at the president’s behest, been effectively undermining
the sort of things that Jusuf and Widodo had been saying. On Octo-
ber 17,	1979, on the first anniversary of the Widodo statement,
Sudomo, having first discussed the matter with Suharto, held a secret
meeting with Golkar leaders in which it was agreed that ABRI was
35.	According to Nasution, the formulation of the "Widodo paper"
was completely in accordance with the views of Jusuf, Widodo and
Jusuf having discussed the matter at some length. Interview with
General Nasution, May 10, 1979. Widodo, whose relations with Jusuf
were anything but warm, implicitly concedes that his views and those
of Jusuf were similar on this subject. However, Widodo criticizes
Jusuf for not having the "courage" to implement the ideas he pro-
claimed. Interview with General Widodo, November 17, 1981. Ac-
cording to Dharsono "this initiative from General Widodo was a result
of [an] assignment by Jusuf ... to prepare that kind of paper on
. . . the role of ABRI." Interview with Lt. Gen. Dharsono, Novem-
ber 12, 1981.
36.	General Nasution interview.126
"absolutely Golkar" and "part of the big Golkar family." This is a
matter which will be pursued in a later section. In the meantime, it
is worth noting the observation of Sukendro; "It seems to me," he
said in July 1981, "that they don't use this [Widodo] paper at all."37
Indeed, within three days of officially accepting the Widodo paper the
regime had casually brushed aside one of that document's key pro-
posals—that ABRI stand above all groups in society—when Suharto
had Golkar brought still more directly under his personal control and
that of the dominant military men in his circle. A week in politics is
truly a long time.
Golkar Chooses a Chairman
Rarely had any institution been so totally the lengthened
shadow of a single man.38
That observation, made by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. about
the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, could, with equal accuracy, have
been applied to Golkar under Suharto in the late 1970s. Suharto and
his lieutenants had fashioned it into an effective electoral machine in
the late 1960s and had steered it thereafter to two successive legis-
lative victories. The Suharto circle was totally committed to Golkar,
and the ruling councils of this "functional group" were so dominated
by the president's military associates that, though nominally indepen-
dent, it was in most respects a carbon copy of the government and
all that for which it stood.
At the First National Congress (MUNAS) of Golkar, held in
Surabaya in September 1973, Suharto had been confirmed in his posi-
tion as chief controller (Pembina Utama) with the power to select the
other members of the Central Control Board (Dewan Pembina Pusat,
or Wanbinpus), the decision-making body of the organization.39
(ABRI's influence was clearly apparent at the Surabaya meeting. Half
of the 660 delegates were said to be military men and during the con-
37.	Interview with Maj. Gen. Sukendro, July 1981.
38.	Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (New
York: Ballantine Books, 1979), p. 263.
39.	Leo Suryadinata, "Golkar of Indonesia: Its Origins and Develop-
ment," Unpublished monograph (Singapore: Institute of Southeast
Asian Studies, 1981), ch. 4, p. 15. The term "Pembina Utama" was
first used in mid-1971. I am indebted to Dr. Suryadinata for this in-
formation.
The use of acronyms like Wanbinpus is an obvious pointer to
army influence. "Membina" and "Pembina," Ben Anderson notes, are
part of a peculiar army terminology dating from the early 1960s.
"Pembina" conveys a sense of "shaper," "moulder," or "controller" (in
the intelligence sense). (Private communication, February 2, 1984.)127
ference the Golkar general secretary, Brig. Gen. Sapardjo stated in
quite explicit terms that Golkar consisted of three important compo-
nents, one of which was ABR,.)1*0
In October 1978, barely three days after the promulgation of
the Widodo paper, the Second National Congress of Golkar (MUNAS
II) was held in Bali. At this gathering, the post of Pembina Utama
was abolished. However, Suharto was chosen as the chairman of the
forty-five-member Control Board (Ketua Dewan Pembina). As such,
he wielded untrammeled control over the functional group. The Cen-
tra, Control Board is the "Politboro" of Golkar, and Suharto had the
power not only to appoint members of the twenty-five-member Centra,
Executive Board (Dewan Pimpinan Pusat, DPP)—the "Centra, Commit-
tee" of the organization—but the power to veto any policies of that
body. He also had the power to suspend the DPP.1** In the event of
any such freeze, the DPP’s functions were to be taken over by the
Control Board.1*2 At the same time, the Dewan Pembina was author-
ized to convene a special congress of the organization to elect and
appoint the members of the Control Boards at the provincial and
kabupaten level?3 These new powers not only enhanced Suharto’s
ability to control the selection of any eventual successor as president;
they also gave him more day-to-day involvement in Golkar affairs.
"As chairman of the board," a member of the executive board noted
at the time, "he will always have the last say."1*1*
The post-Bali membership of the Central Control Board was
dominated by military officers and civilians associated with Suharto.
Amongst the military representatives were Genera, Panggabean,
Genera, Darjatmo, Genera, Amir Machmud, Genera, Surono, Lt. Gen.
Sudharmono, Lt. Gen. Ali Murtopo, Lt. Gen. Alamsjah, Maj. Gen.
Mudjono, Maj. Gen. Bustanil Arifin, Lt. Gen. Sunandar Prijosudarmo,
Lt. Gen. Charis Suhud, Maj. Gen. Sudjono Humardhani, and Brig.
Gen. Sapardjo. Among the civilians were Dr. Widjojo Nitisastro and
half a dozen other prominent technocrats from the cabinet (Drs.
Radius Prawiro, Dr. J. B. Sumarlin, Prof. Sudarsono Hadisaputro,
Dr. Emi, Salim, Dr. Purnomosidi Hadjisarosa and Drs. Harun Zain).
A number of other present and former cabinet ministers were also
40.	Suryadinata, "Golkar of Indonesia," ch. 4, p. 14. According to
Dr. Suryadinata, Sapardjo was the first official to make this point in
such strong terms. (Private communication.)
41.	The terms "politburo" and "central committee" were used by
Jusuf Wanandi, a member of Golkar's Dewan Pimpinan Pusat and a
deputy treasurer of the organization. Interview, October 24, 1978.
42.	Suryadinata "Golkar of Indonesia," ch. 7, p. 28.
43.	See Julian M. Boileau, "Golkar: Functional Group Politics in In-
donesia" (M.A. thesis, University of Auckland, 1980), p. 129.
44.	Interview with Jusuf Wanandi, October 20, 1978.128
included. President Suharto was both chairman and a member of the
Dewan Pembina.1+5
The Control Council’s eleven-man daily executive committee
(Presidium Harian), the body through which the president was said to
exercise direct control over Golkar, reflected a similar composition.
Seven of the eleven members were prominent generals (Panggabean,
Darjatmo, Amir Machmud, Surono, Sudharmono, Ali Murtopo, and
Alamsjah); there were three technocrats (Widjojo, Radius Prawiro, and
Sumarlin), and one former cabinet minister (Mashuri). The chairman
of the body was General Panggabean, coordinating minister for politi-
cal and security affairs.1+6 (It is interesting to note that the
Murtopo-CSIS group did not come out of the MUNAS II as well as
they had expected. They had supported the idea of the president
becoming chairman of the Dewan Pembina, but despite his indifferent
health, Ali Murtopo is said to have had his eye on the job of chair-
man of the daily executive board. There was, however, considerable
opposition to this and Suharto may have preferred to keep Murtopo at
arm's length, placing Panggabean there instead.47)
By the time of the MUNAS II, Golkar had gone some way to-
wards "demilitarizing” itself. Prior to its first national congress in
1973, the Golkar leadership, both at the center and in the regions,
had been almost completely in the hands of active military officers.
The panglima was in almost every case the chairman of the provincial
Golkar Control Board (Dewan Pembina Daerah), and Korem and Kodim
commanders served concurrently as chairmen of the functional group’s
Control Boards at the kabupaten and kecamatan levels. (In some areas
outside Java, where a Kodam might cover two or three provinces, it was
possible for a Korem officers to serve as the chairman of the Golkar
provincial Control Board.) The Golkar executive boards at the
national, provincial, kabupaten, and kecamatan levels were likewise
dominated by active military officers. In 1973 the government took
the first tentative steps towards "demilitarization,’’ when territorial
officers were informed that they had to choose whether to remain
within the territorial structure or become full-time Golkar officials.
This "change," however, was more apparent than real. For example, a
Korem commander who opted to stay on as chairman of a Golkar Control
Board was simply transferred to kekaryaan duties; he was still on
active duty and still answerable to the Defense Ministry. This could
hardly be said to have lessened military influence over Golkar. As a
karyawan, such an officer was answerable to the chief of the
45.	See Keputusan Ketua Dewan Pembina Goiongan Karya Nomor
02/DP-Golkar/1978 ten tang Susunan Personalia Dewan Pembina
Goiongan Karya, Jakarta, December 28,	1978. This document was
signed by President Suharto in his capacity as chairman of the Dewan
Pembina Goiongan Karya.
46.	Ibid.
47.	Confidential communication, July 16, 1981.129
functional affairs staff (KoskarT* in Jakarta (rather than the assistant
for territorial affairs), and at the same time, to Golkar headquarters
in Jakarta, itself very much in the hands of senior military officers.
What is more, the local panglima was still, in almost every case, the
chairman of the provincial Golkar Control Board, with considerable
influence (via his assistant Vl/territorial) over the affairs of the
functional group at the local level.
Shortly before the 1977 general elections the Suharto govern-
ment took a further—and more significant—step towards the '’demilita-
rization11 of Golkar when it introduced a ruling that active military of-
ficers could not be members of the functional group. The main im-
pact of this decision was felt in the renamed Regional Assessment
Boards and the Regency Advisory Boards, the Golkar control bodies
at the provincial and kabupaten levels.2+8 These bodies, as we have
seen, had largely been under the influence of serving military offi-
cers, which meant that they were particularly responsive to the
wishes of the military and administrative hierarchy. However, the
decision to "demilitarize" also affected Golkar's provincial and
kabupaten-leve, executive boards. There were twenty-six of the for-
mer and roughly 300 of the latter, and the proportion of military offi-
cers on these bodies was still quite high.1^ In all, it was said, the
decision would result in about 300-400 active military officers giving
up their positions in the Golkar regional structure over a six-month
period. 50
To some extent, this second round of civilianization was also
more apparent than real. Most of the officers who were obliged to
resign were at or near retirement age anyway, and all but a handful
were immediately reelected to their former positions. Given their long
connection with the armed forces, their status as favored members of
the "new class" in the towns and cities of Indonesia, and the influ-
ence exercised over them by the ruling organs of Golkar in Jakarta,
the so called "demilitarization" was not calculated to produce many
upsets.
The rapid transformation of many key Golkar functionaries from
territorial officer to karyawan to retired officer in the space of five
years was insufficient to still a "more autonomy" debate among certain
48.	The name Regional Assessment Board (Dewan Pertimbangan
Daerah) was introduced under the Golkar constitution of 1978 in place
of the former Regional Supervisory Board (Dewan Pembina Daerah -
Tingkat I, or Wanbintu). The name Regional Advisory Board (Dewan
Penasehat Daerah) took the place of the old Regional Supervisory
Board—Regency Level (Dewan Pembina Daerah—Tingkat II, or
Wanbindu). This change appears to have been aimed at removing
misunderstanding over the use of the word pembina. As of 1978, the
Dewan Pembina in Jakarta was the only body to use this term.
49.	Interview with Jusuf Wanandi, October 24, 1978.
50.	Ibid.130
disaffected members of the ruling group. In the period leading up to
the MUNAS II in Bali, the leaders of the socalled Trikarya group, the
three ex-kino (groupings) which had been the major components of
the original Sekber Golkar in 1964, voiced wide-ranging criticisms of
Golkar as part of an attempt to regain influence in the organization.
In the view of the Trikarya leaders—Maj. Gen. (retd.) Suhardiman of
Soksi, Maj. Gen. (retd.) Mas Isman of Kosgoro and Brig. Gen.
(retd.) Sugandhi of MKGR51—Golkar had lost contact with the mass
of the people. The organization, they felt, was too bureaucratic and
too dependent on the backing of ABRI and Korpri. Not long before
the Bali congress, Mas Isman held a meeting of former members of the
Seventeenth Brigade of student soldiers at the home of Brig. Gen.
Sugandhi. Though all those in attendance were members of Golkar,
they opted for less army involvement in the affairs of the functional
group and more grassroots input. As a power play, the Trikarya
move failed. The Suharto group quite easily crushed an attempt by
Mas Isman to contest the Golkar leadership during the Bali meeting;
the Mas Isman group, it was said, was able to muster the support of
no more than seventy-five of the 1 ,200 delegates.52 On the other
hand, the conference did at least adopt a resolution giving verbal
recognition to the need to ensure that Golkar was more strongly root-
ed amongst the people.
51.	The full names of these kino was as follows:
Soksi (Sentral Organisasi Karyawan Sosialis Indonesia) or Cen-
tral Organization of Indonesian Socialist Karyawan; Kosgoro (Koperasi
Serba Usaha Gotong Royong) or All-Purpose Mutual Help Coopera-
tives; MKGR (Musyawarah Kekeluargaan Gotong Royong) or Family Mut
ual Help Association.
52.	Prior to the Bali meeting a number of senior officers, including
Lt. Gen. Solichin Gautama Purwanegara, Brig. Gen. Sudarto, Maj.
Gen. Mas Isman, and Rear Admiral Djambir Pardjaman, visited Yoga
Sugama, Sudomo, and Mohammad Jusuf, all of whom expressed sup-
port for the initiative for less army and more grass-roots support in
Golkar. According to these three senior generals, Suharto was also
receptive to the idea. (At one stage, Sudomo is said to have made
the point that Maj. Gen. Amir Murtono, the chairman of the Dewan
Pimpinan Pusat of Golkar, was unfit to lead the organization.) If
Suharto ever had shared these views, he had changed his mind by
the time of the Golkar congress in Bali. According to one account,
Lt. Gen. Ali Murtopo made the point (via an editorial in Merdeka}
that, if the army withdrew from Golkar, it would leave a vacuum
which would be filled by forces bent on challenging Suharto. At this
stage, it is suggested, Suharto decided that he would lead Golkar
himself. Confidential communication, March 25, 1982. Whatever the
truth of that account, there is the odd fact that General Panggabean
interrupted his stay in Bali to fly back to Jakarta to confer with the
president. He returned with the message that Suharto would lead
Golkar himself.131
If the 1977 changes meant that Golkar was becoming more ci-
vilianized, then the Catch 22 to the proposition was that the "civil-
ians” concerned were mostly retired military officers. As this devel-
opment coincided with the retirement of many members of the Genera-
tion of ’45, the move could be seen not so much as a "demilitariza-
tion" as a device to ensure, at the central level at any rate, the con-
tinued dominance of the functional group by those around Suharto.
"Demilitarization" did not mean any substantive changes in
Golkar's central leadership or policy. Indeed, it indicated that the
Generation of '45 leaders maintained their control over the functional
group. At the provincial level, Golkar's "civilianization" was likely to
have more impact; but here too the key positions would be filled by
retired military men. Golkar strategists argued at the time that this
was a significant step, if only because it severed the direct link be-
tween official duty and service on the Golkar regional policy-making
boards. Retired military men, it was said, would not have any offi-
cial backing and would have to rely on their own standing and au-
thority in the community to bring influence to bear on their bodies;
they could not simply issue orders and insist that these be obeyed.
There was something to this assertion. Experience had shown that
Hankam's hold over an officer often began to "fade" once he was on
the retirement list. However, if the government leaders were worried
that they tended to lose control over retired ABRI men, critics
charged that the community would still look on these men as boju
hijau (green shirts), a valid concern in many regions.
Moreover, it could hardly be said that the government had
abandoned all control of the provincial Golkar boards. Though these
boards might no longer be under the thumb of the Ministry of De-
fense and Security, they were very much under the control of
Golkar's Central Executive Board, which was itself beholden to the
Central Control Board. And that amounted to much the same thing:
the leadership of Golkar and the government was interchangeable.
Why did Golkar "demilitarize" itself? The answer would appear
to be that the move was forced upon it. Many officers were uncom-
fortable with the idea of helping the government political grouping in
such an overt and obvious way. Moreover, the presence of military
men on Golkar boards was hardly conducive to the notion of Golkar as
an independent entity. Times were changing, and an adjustment was
necessary. The solution to the problem typified the approach of the
New Order rulers. Though changes were made—some cosmetic,
others more substantive—the bottom line was the same; power re-
mained where it had always been—in the hands of the president and
those around him.
Whatever the long-term consequences of MUNAS II, Suharto
thus emerged from the conference with his hold over Golkar greatly
enhanced. This, in its own way, helped set the stage for the show-
down that was looming over the military's role in society. At a time
when the army chief of staff was responding to calls that the military
stand above all groups in society, the president was tightening his132
Table IV. Golkar: The Structure and Distribution of Power
(as of 1978)
SOURCE: The above diagram was adapted from that prepared by Dr.
Leo Suryadinata in his study ’’Golkar of Indonesia: Its Origins and
Development. ”
Chaired by President Suharto, the 45-member Dewan Pembina was the
"Politburo” of Golkar. Day-to-day power was in the hands of an li-
man "daily board" headed by General Panggabean. The DPP was the
"Central Committee" of Golkar. After MUNAS II in 1978, seven of the
11 members of the Dewan Pembina's daily board were senior generals,
all of them longstanding associates of Suharto.133
grip on Golkar with the almost certain intention of ensuring that the
functional group would maintain its preeminence in the 1982 general
elections. There were still a number of acts to be played out. The
"ABRI-above-all-groups" line was only just being taken up by the
new minister of defense, General Jusuf. However, it seems beyond
doubt that Suharto had always intended that when it came to the
crunch, ABRI would weigh in on the side of the political grouping
over which he himself presided.CHAPTER SIX
BOTH SIDES AGAINST THE MIDDLE
We are still being shadowed by the feudal system.
General Sumitro1
If you know the tradition in the court of the sultans, the
kraton, there is the king, the Sultan, and you have the
princes. If the princes come to the Sultan it is always:
"You are alright." Maybe three or four princes have dif-
ferent opinions but in their talks it is always one to one,
not together. "You are alright!" But if the princes are
going to fight, ya, you can fight and the one who wins is
the right man. It's more or less the same today, not 100
percent.
General A. H. Nasution2
Suharto will never use only one person. He will balance
these people, the one controlling the other, for his pur-
pose. And everybody feels Suharto likes him.
Maj. Gen. Sukendro3
Sometimes we ask ourselves whether this rivalry problem
is not just created by the president himself.
Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono4
Domo is a watchdog.
General Widodo5
When a new presidential office block was nearing completion in
Jakarta in the late 1960s, it was known initially as the "KISS" build-
1.	Interview with Genera, Sumitro, July 18, 1981.
2.	Interview with Genera, Nasution, June 23, 1980.
3.	Interview with Maj. Gen. Sukendro, July 17, 1981.
4.	Interview with Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono, July 23, 1981 .
5.	Interview with Genera, Widodo, November 17, 1981.
134135
ing, this being an abbreviation of the words describing the key func-
tions that were to be performed there—Koordinasi, Integrasi, Sta-
bilisasi, and Sinkronisasi. But the cynics, knowing the way Suharto
liked to summon his chief lieutenants and play them off against one
another, were soon suggesting that KISS was an acronym derived
from the words "Ke Istana Sendiri-Sendiri." (”To the palace one by
one.”) It was an apt observation. Suharto, though he enjoyed enor-
mous power by virtue of his position as president and Commander-
in-Chief of the armed forces (not to mention his position as the domi-
nant influence in the all-powerful armed forces) adopted a style of
rule that was at times decidedly patrimonial.
Suharto was highly skilled at playing one "prince” off against
another. And the structures he had erected, particularly in the
army, his choice of men for top military positions—in which loyalty
was preferred over application and aptitude—along with a highly un-
orthodox "doubling up" of key military functions, allowed him enor-
mous scope to play just this game, the system thus created serving
admirably his own immediate ends, if not necessarily those of the
armed forces or the nation as a whole. As we have seen, Suharto
believed in the need for a "creative tension" between those who
served around him, and adopted a style of divide-and-rule under
which the position of potential rivals was effectively weakened while
his own position was effectively enhanced.
Suharto, having been thrust on to the center of the political
stage by the events of 1965, had spent the years since then system-
atically extending and defending his power base. The result was that
the institutionalization of the military within the bureaucratic polity
was virtually complete, and the position of Suharto virtually unassail-
able. Through an elaborate and extensive command system, in which
power and responsibility were often parallel and overlapping, and
through the judicious appointment of trustworthy Javanese and/or
Christians and Outer Islanders, Suharto had been able to ensure that
the power and influence of any one of half a dozen of the key
powerholders was always counterbalanced and neutralized by the
power and influence of at least one or other of his colleagues.
Nowhere was this more apparent than within Hankam. In the
early 1980s, General Jusuf was the minister of defense and the com-
mander of the armed forces. Admiral Sudomo was the deputy com-
mander of the armed forces and, in theory, answerable to Jusuf on
military matters. But Sudomo was also the commander of Kopkamtib.
Acting in this capacity, he was able to go "above” Jusuf to the presi-
dent and "below” him in the sense that he had direct access to and
commanded the loyalty of the commanders of each of the military re-
gions. The pattern was repeated throughout the system. Yoga
Sugama was not only chief of Bakin but was, for two years, chief of
staff of Kopkamtib as well. Benny Murdani was not only assistant 1
(intelligence) at Hankam but head of Kopkamtib intelligence and
deputy chairman of Bakin. He was, at the same time, head of Pusin-
telstrat (Strategic Intelligence Center) and would in an emergency
have had day-to-day command of all Kopassandha (Red Beret) units,136
the "praetorian guard" of Hankam. The commander of the Kopas-
sandha, Maj. Gen. Yogie Suardi Memet, doubled as commander of the
Siliwangi (West Java) military region. By this device, patently
"illegal" in the eyes of a number of retired officers, Suharto concen-
trated extraordinary power in the hands of half a dozen of his most
trusted aides. At the same time, he ensured that his position re-
mained paramount by dispersing power among officers who, while loyal
to both himself and the armed forces, were divided by interpersonal
rivalries and suspicions. These interpersonal rivalries were, in fact,
a key feature of the group of ruling military officers around Suharto,
and there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that they were ac-
tively encouraged by the president. For example, Ali Murtopo (and
the institutions and groups over which he presided) were largely an-
tagonistic to Amir Machmud and the powerful Ministry of Home Affairs
over which he ruled. (Murtopo had earlier been a bitter rival of
General Sumitro and was suspected in some quarters of having engi-
neered Sumitro's downfall.) Jusuf was wary of Murtopo, contemptu-
ous of Panggabean, his predecessor as minister, and had no time for
Widodo, the 1978-80 army chief of staff. Murdani shared Jusuf’s feel-
ings about Widodo and enjoyed a fairly testy relationship with Yoga
Sugama. Yoga remembered Sumitro with hostility. Nor were those
rivalries confined to military circles. Murdani and the civilian foreign
minister, Dr. Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, were often felt to be competing
for influence on foreign policy matters, each confident that he en-
joyed the full backing of the president. Indeed, Suharto had been
known to use Murdani and Mochtar on the same problem, sometimes
sending them out to accomplish opposite goals, thereby exacerbating
personal, institutional, and also civilian-military rivalries.6
This system had been used to good effect in the past and, if it
had played a part in fanning the uniquely destructive Sumitro-Ali
Murtopo clash in the early 1970s, it had at least kept most of the loci
of power in rough balance and in harmonious orbit around the presi-
dent. Now, as Suharto was forced to consider the question of ABRI’s
increasing estrangement from society, there is considerable evidence
that he fell back on the old device of not letting the right hand know
what the left hand was doing. In 1979, the two most senior officers
in Hankam—Jusuf and Sudomo—were sent in different directions and
apparently encouraged to make contradictory statements about the role
that ABRI would play in society, the more "positive" remarks being
delivered in public by Jusuf, while the more "pragmatic" and conven-
tional observations were made by Sudomo in private meetings with
senior military commanders. (There were, however, a number of
cross-currents running at this time and, while the evidence suggests
that Suharto played one key aide off against another, it would be
6. When Vietnamese foreign minister Nguyen Co Thach puzzled aloud
over the fact that Murdani and Mochtar had come to Hanoi on differ-
ent occasions and said very different things, an Indonesian editor
had said, "Yes, and you must remember that both were sent by the
same man!"137
wrong to see the events of this period solely in terms of presidential
manipulation. To some extent, Jusuf may have been a willing partici-
pant in the game that was being played.)
When Jusuf took up his post as defense minister in March 1978,
there was already considerable concern about the widening gap be-
tween the armed forces and the people. Late in 1977, students in
Jakarta and Bandung had stressed that "ABRI should be returned to
the people.”7 In mid-January 1978, Lt. Gen. Dharsono had called on
the armed forces to be more attentive to public unease and not base
everything on military power and strength.8 In March, the PPP had
felt that the situation was serious enough for it to put forward a pro-
posal in Commission A (Defense and Security) of the MPR that ”ABRI
stand above all groups in society.”9
None of these pleas had received a particularly sympathetic
hearing. The student call, being so closely interwoven with the in-
creasing student criticism of the president and his family, was either
rejected out of hand or treated as some sort of subversive manoeu-
ver. Dharsono’s call, critical of the New Order and made in the
presence of the very students and others who had criticized Suharto,
had so angered the president that he insisted that the unrepentant
Dharsono be removed from his post at ASEAN.10 Nor had the PPP
met with any success. The faction, which had differed on a number
of issues with other groups in the MPR, particularly the combined
factions of Golkar, ABRI, and the Provincial Delegates, saw this
proposal, like most of its others, turned down.
Change was in the air, however. As we have seen, the ABRI
leadership had felt at the time of the December 1977 meeting that they
needed to get prominent retired generals on side—and one of the
major concerns of the retired "seniors” had been this very estrange-
ment. It was perhaps not coincidental that the theme of the 1978
Commander’s Call, held in Jakarta in February, was "To step up vigi-
lance, alertness, and the integration of ABRI and the people to safe-
guard and make a success of the 1978 MPR General Session" (italics
added).* 11 Widodo, installed as army chief of staff on January 26,
1978, had been working hard to get Fosko off the ground and had
taken steps, almost immediately on entering office, to set up a com-
mittee to redefine the army’s position. Widodo's early public state-
ments on this question were cautious and seemingly noncommittal. In
7.	David Jenkins, "The generals flex their muscles," FEER, Febru-
ary 3, 1978.
8.	"The second time around," Ibid., February 3, 1978.
9.	Tempo, March 25, 1978.
10.	David Jenkins, "Exit outspoken Dharsono," FEER, February 24,
1978, and "Last broadside from Dharsono," Ibid., March 3, 1978.
11.	See Berita Buana, Merdeka, Suara Karya, Peiita, and Angkatan
Bersenjata, February 22, 1978.138
April 1978, he talked of the ’’estranged relations” between ABRI and
a section of the community. "ABRI is reduced in its genuine worth
in the eyes of the people," he noted elliptically, "and is said to be
socio-politically no longer above all groups.”12 In June, speaking in
Medan at the 27th anniversary of the Bukit Barisan (Kodam II) Com-
mand, Widodo stressed that the people were an inexhaustible source
of strength for the armed forces, and should not be neglected on any
pretext. Uniting the people and the armed forces, "as urged by
President Suharto," should be carried out by ways of corrective and
educative contacts, not by coercion and pressure.13 In Jakarta two
days later, the army chief of staff reiterated his appeal for unity be-
tween the people and ABRI "as urged by President Suharto some time
ago.’’li+ By October 1978, Widodo—and the army general staff—was
not only stressing the need for ABRI-people unity but had come out
in favor of ABRI playing a less central role in the political process.
In his Armed Forces Day speech on October 5, Suharto had himself
taken up this call.15
Jusuf, no less concerned about this state of affairs than
Widodo, had known of the existence of the Seskoad paper and had,
soon after his installation as minister of defense in March 1978, asked
for a copy of it. Initially, his staff at Hankam had sought to deflect
him by writing an entirely new paper.16 However, this attempt did
not prove successful. Jusuf was able to obtain a copy of the Seskoad
document and this, it is said, influenced him and reinforced his own
belief that there was a very great need to bolster ABRI-people unity.
When Jusuf unveiled his program for ABRI in mid-1978, one of its
three central pillars was the need to bridge the gap between the
armed forces and the people. (The other goals were improving the
welfare of the ordinary soldiers and increasing the quality and combat
readiness of the Indonesian forces. This was an astute blend of ob-
jectives; in the wake of ABRI's poor performance and heavy losses in
East Timor, many professionally oriented officers were said to have
blamed this on the military’s neglect of its "true" role while it con-
centrated on the politico-economic aspects of its dual function in the
years since 1966.17 Jusuf’s program ministered to these concerns
while stressing ABRI's oneness with the people, an essential prereq-
uisite if ABRI were to continue to be effective as a social-political
force. At the same time, his great popularity among Muslim groups
12.	Antara, April 1978.
13.	Ibid., June 22, 1978.
10. Ibid.
15.	See speech by President Suharto, October 5, 1978.
16.	Interview with General Nasution, May 11 , 1979.
17.	See Barbara S. Harvey, "Indonesia: The Search for Stability,
the Inevitability of Change," Dyoson House Papers, 2 (October 1977):
1.139
helped break down the impression that ABRI and Islam were somehow
bound to be more or less permanently at loggerheads.)
To help bridge the ABRI-people gap, Jusuf gave top priority to
what he called “territorial cultivation”—the improvement of the
all-important territorial structure. His aim, he said in the second
half of 1978, was to send specially qualified territorial officers to key
posts, presumably at the Korem and Kodim level; until they were
ready, a team of social scientists was to be assigned in each Kodam to
assist the territorial officers. In keeping with the new policy, the
minister took steps to curtail the activities of ABRI officers, some of
them very highly placed, whose ostentatious lifestyles were a matter
of notoriety. As part of the new emphasis on austerity and simple
living, he withdrew the armed military guards that had been posted
around the clock at the homes of cabinet ministers, senior bureau-
crats, and high-ranking military officers. Jusuf’s policies thus had
something for everyone; they stressed the need to improve the train-
ing and performance of ABRI’s operational units while at the same
time tending to the needs of the territorial “leg."
There was, as we have seen, considerable ill feeling between
Jusuf and Widodo; neither man had any time for the other, a fact
that worried a number of senior staff officers. However, the two men
did discuss the matter of the army's role in society at some length
and were in broad agreement about what that role should be.18 The
“Widodo paper," which was endorsed by the army chief of staff six
months after Jusuf became minister, is said to have been “completely
in line with Jusuf's views."19 Jusuf, like all other senior officers,
was committed to the notion of the army having a dual function in
society. But, like Widodo, he wished to see certain limits on this
role. In July 1979, Jusuf was asked whether the military had not
"gone too far" with the dwifungsi. "I would not use the term 'going
too far'," he answered, "but we should be much more moderate."*0
During his first ten months in office, Jusuf's statements on this
topic had been of a rather general nature. However, in February
1979, he squarely addressed the question of the army's relationship
with the political groupings in society. During a tour of West and
South Sumatra, Jusuf ordered all ABRI echelons not to interfere in,
or busy themselves with, the internal affairs of the political parties
and Golkar. In briefing all ranks of Kodam IV/Sriwijaya in Palembang
and Kodam 111/17 August in Padang, Jusuf said repeatedly that ABRI
should let the political parties and Golkar alone to learn and attempt
to grow and become mature on their own strength: "Don't be suspi-
cious instantly when you assume that people are of the United Party
or the PDI, that's not good and that's wrong. As ABRI members you
must be fair and accommodate their aspirations. Don't defend one
18.	Nasution interview, June 23 1980.
19.	Ibid.
20.	Interview with General Jusuf, July 25, 1979.140
while you do all sorts of things with the others, that’s not good.
You must remember this well and note it well.”21
Although certain themes were always stressed in his public
utterances, Jusuf had the politician's knack of keeping his ear close
to the ground and addressing particular problems and grievances as
they were brought to his attention. His observations on ABRI's role
in society, which were to receive so much attention in the months to
come, may have been triggered to some extent by purely local devel-
opments. Before his statements in Padang and Palembang, the minis-
ter had received a report from the Kodim commander in Tanjong
Pandan and Belitung, Lt. Col. Ali Masahwa, on the split in the PDI
in the region. Jusuf, according to one account, gave an order on
the spot that, true to the basic principles that it was a protector and
guardian of society, ABRI must not side with only one group. He
ordered ABRI members to stop interfering in disputes in the political
parties or Golkar unless those disputes created a problem of security
and order.22 Jusuf noted that the ABRI territorial apparatus had
often ’’meddled" in local government affairs. If this continued, he
said, it would obscure the rights, tasks, and authority of "another
department." Accordingly, he ordered the territorial apparatus to
stop the practice. "Up front, ABRI must be an example," he said,
"and in the rear it must be a stimulus for society's progress. ... If
ABRI does not wish to be the target of a policy of playing it off
against others, then you must by no means engage in intrigues to get
people to fight against one another. That's extremely dangerous. I
warn you from now on that it must be stopped." Jusuf observed that
almost every matter—even the loss of a chicken—was reported to
Kopkamtib. This, he said, was mistaken; that was not Kopkamtib's
task. It was the "stimulus and mover" in case there was stagnation
in the mechanism of the government organization: "I have said to
Admiral Sudomo, 'When can you ever take a rest when all matters in
the life of this nation are reported to Kopkamtib?"'23
The account of Jusuf's observations in Sumatra would seem to
suggest that the defense minister was drawn into this matter almost
by accident. However, even if that were the case, it must be as-
sumed that Suharto very soon gave this line his blessing. It is in-
conceivable that Jusuf made it such an issue without Suharto's ex-
press backing; indeed, the minister always went out of his way to
emphasize that he was acting in the name of the president.
In his Padang and Palembang speeches, Jusuf noted that there
were certain standards by which one could judge the progress of the
parties. There was progress if they were developing strong roots in
the community, and thus serving as the real channel of the com-
munity's political aspirations. There was progress if, besides devel-
21.	Pelita, February 6, 1979. USE.
22.	Ibid.
23.	Ibid.141
oping and struggling for the interests and the aspirations of their
own groups, they were also developing national aspirations under
which group interests and aspirations were subordinated. There was
progress if members of the parties and Golkar were freer in electing
their leaders at all levels according to their own organizations' con-
stitutions and by-laws. Political development in the past ten years,
he said, had concerned the orientation, culture, and restructuring of
organizations. Party and Golkar functionaries had often been the
target, approached in all ways, from persuasion and pressure to di-
rect intervention. Now this period was considered to have passed.
The time had come to permit the parties and Golkar to function from
below.2I+
Jusuf's speech, so at variance with what had until then been
considered the government view, brought an immediate response.
"The statement is very encouraging," observed Sabam Sirait, the PDI
secretary general.25 According to Ridwan Saidi of the PPP, the
Jusuf statement was a fresh stimulus for the sociopolitical groups to
come of age and function as they should. "The democratization
process has got an encouraging stimulus."26 H. M. Munasir of the
PPP and Hardjanto of the PDI fully supported the defense minister’s
instruction that ABRI not interfere in the internal affairs of the par-
ties. The reaction from Golkar was a little more subdued. Ir.
Sarwono Kusumaatmadja, secretary of the Golkar grouping in the
DPR, welcomed the minister's statement but said that, if the socio-
political groups refused to comply with the rules of the game in their
own organizations, this would automatically invite the intervention of
outsiders. Moreover, so long as ABRI did not yet trust 100 percent
the commitment of these sociopolitical forces to Pancasila and the 1945
Constitution, it would continue to interfere. The Jusuf statement, he
said, was a signal that the "intensity" of ABRI's interference would
be "regulated" as time went on. However, no one should dream that
ABRI's interference would automatically disappear.27 As it turned
out, this sort of skepticism was not misplaced.
From Sumatra, Jusuf flew to Irian Jaya, where he again called
on ABRI to refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of the po-
litical parties and Golkar.28 The following week he emphasized that
ABRI did not give precedence to or favor any one group, faction,
party, or Golkar because ABRI was from and for all the people.
ABRI must neither let itself be pitted against others, nor pit one
24.	Kompas, February 7, 1979. USE.
25.	Ibid., February 12, 1979. USE.
26.	Ibid.
27.	Kompas, February 8, 1979. USE.
28.	Ibid.142
group against another. ABRI must not take steps that could "make a
muddle" of its authority in the country's constitutional life.29
The Jusuf message, which the minister continued to spell out in
speeches across the country, attracted increasing support. Pelita,
the paper associated with the PPP, recognized the obvious benefits
that would accrue to the political parties if the policy were enforced.
The late General Sudirman once said that soldiers were
those who joined the TNI not because of wanting to get a
bowl of rice but because of the call of "ibu pertiwi" [an-
other word for "tanah air" or fatherland]. Sudirman did
not use the word "tanah air." His intention was none
other than to indicate that ABRI is the people's own flesh
and blood. . . . Considering General Sudirman's dictum,
the stipulation of the preamble of the 1945 Constitution,
and Article 30 of the state's Constitution, we underscore
and welcome the statement of Genera, Jusuf . . . that
ABR, as an instrument of the state shall protect all layers
of the populace and that the people should be involved in
the defense of the country and state.30
As Jusuf continued, his message became clearer and more ex-
plicit. Speaking in East Java at the end of April, he said that ABRI
was not the defender of a group of people but the defender of al,
groups of people; ABR, did not defend a part of the country but all
parts of the country. ABR, was not an instrument of a group, a
political party, or an individual, but an instrument of the nation and
state.31 This, of course, was precisely what the Widodo paper—and
many retired ABR, "seniors"—had been saying. What is more, Jusuf
made a point of being available to these people. As he noted in July
1979:
I see them al, the time, these people. Kawilarang! Adjie!
They al, know me well from the days when I was a young
officer. I said, "Whenever you have anything you want
to say, you come and see me before you go screaming it
out. If you don't get anywhere with me, you can scream
it out all over the world." But I said, "If you scream it
out before you see me, then I wil, push you down to the
very bottom of the ocean. And I won't push you in the
back. I wil, push you face to face."32
29.	Ibid., February 15, 1979.	USE.
30.	Pelita, February 19, 1979.	USE.
31.	Angkatan Bersenjata, April	28, 1979. USE.
32.	Interview with Genera, Jusuf, July 25, 1979.	143
Late in August, the defense minister told an "informal gather-
ing" of senior government and ABR, officials in South Sulawesi that
the role demanded from ABRI to be the dynamizer of the people's po-
litical awareness did not mean that ABRI must interfere in the inter-
nal affairs of the political parties. Let the political parties as a social
institution grow normally in Indonesia's political life, he said. "Let
the political parties elect their own chairman. Don't interfere in their
internal affairs." ABRI had to stand in the middle, not side with any
one group, in accordance with the message of the late General Sudir-
man and the 1945 Constitution.33
Meanwhile, Jusuf's initiatives continued to receive widespread
support—particularly from retired senior officers. Early in October,
Lt. Gen. Ali Sadikin observed in an interview with Merdeka that dur-
ing the physical revolution "ABRI and the people were indeed like
fish and water. "3/+ But at the time of the 1977 election, Sadikin said,
people had been shocked by the statement of a high government offi-
cial, headlined massively in the newspaper, that ABRI was a member
of the big Golkar family. "And now Genera, Jusuf wishes to restore
ABRI to its true position as the property of the people, of the PPP,
the PDI, and Golkar, in accordance with the law, the nation's philos-
ophy, the Seven Pledges, and the Soldier's Oath." According to
Sadikin, the concept of ABR, being a sociopolitical force needed to be
questioned again. What were ABRI's politics? In his opinion, ABRI's
politics were to safeguard Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution. In es-
sence, the aspiration of ABRI's dual function was to protect Pancasila
and the 1945 Constitution, and the political emphasis had to be placed
there.
ABRI's dual function must be interpreted as meaning that
ABRI comes when needed to improve the situation. After
the situation has returned to normal, ABRI must restore
the non-ABRI apparatus. The dual function must be in-
terpreted as a mission, not as a placement means. As a
channel, non-ABRI components tend to be treated as be-
ing incompetent, untrustworthy. The channel tends to
break spirit and initiative, the sense of belonging and re-
sponsibility. 35
Domination was "extremely dangerous" as the people might be pushed
to abandon ABRI, to be indifferent and apathetic. Speaking of his
experience as governor of Jakarta, Sadikin said,
	I assigned ABR, was necessary. ABRI men.	1	men to the post of mayor only when it Out of the five mayors only two were		
		thought	if all the mayors were	ABR,
33.	Kompas, August 27, 1979.		USE.	
34.	Merdeka, October	2, 1979.	USE.	
35.	Ibid.			144
people, civilians would at most reach the position of sec-
retary to the camat [subdistrict chief]. And I feared
that this would be a blow to the dignity, self-respect and
hopes of the civilian employees. If we fly into a rage
when accused of upholding a military government, we
must show that the charges are unfounded and that most
government positions must be filled by civilians.36
If the Hankam leadership wished to convince the people that
ABRI stood above all groups and that ABRI was not the property of
only one group, then ’’the political ambition” must inevitably be cur-
tailed:	"If the political ambition is too big, it will encourage the am-
bition for power and this power ambition tends to treat non-ABRI
parties as political enemies. I think the campaign of ABRI's integra-
tion with the people will face a test, for example, in the coming gen-
eral election.”37 ABRI, Sadikin said, should leave the parties and
Golkar alone. It should protect these three sociopolitical forces so
long as they remained within the framework of Pancasila and the 1945
Constitution, and should only act when one of them should prove to
have deviated. In his opinion, civilians were not stupid. They were
experts in their various fields. But they were submerged, as condi-
tions and environments denied them any opportunity.
When I arrived in the context of the dual function, I of-
fered a leadership and conditions that created the climate
to restore their confidence and self-respect. That, for
example, the man responsible in the village is the lurah
and not the Babinsa [village noncom], that in the sub-
district the camat is responsible and not the Koramil,
that in the municipality the mayor is responsible and not
the Kodim and that in Jakarta the governor is responsible
and not the Kodam. And responsibility cannot possibly
be upheld if the person responsible is himself cowardly.36
Similar sentiments were being voiced by General Sumitro, now
making his first public pronouncements since his retirement in 1974.
In an interview in the same issue of Merdeka, the former Kopkamtib
commander called for change in essentially two main areas—ABRI's re-
lations with other social-political groups, and the appointment of ABRI
men to nonmilitary functions.39 The ABRI-people unity that was be-
ing promoted by Jusuf, Sumitro said, should be followed up by a
"normalization” program. This program should cover a phased reduc-
tion in ABRI’s involvement in practical politics, and the public should
provide support by making suggestions for the program, because it
36.	Ibid.
37.	Ibid.
38.	Ibid.
39.	Merdeka, October 2, 1979. USE.145
was time ABRi "returned to its old position." "As the political par-
ties made a mistake, ABRI too, had confessed likewise, and now the
important thing is that we should work together." Golkar, Sumitro
said, must stand on its own. "Its cadres must be able to produce
new ideas, new concepts, and be able to solve social and state prob-
lems." Golkar, the PDI, and the PPP were equal in position and
Golkar should no longer be asking ABRI for help. ABRI engaged in
politics "only at the strategic level between strategic leaders." As
Sumitro saw it, the political parties and the functional group should
become mass organizations; at present, he felt, they tended to be
cadre organizations. According to Sumitro, ABRI's involvement in
"practical politics"—by which he appeared to be referring to the ap-
pointment of karyawan—had stemmed from its desire to prevent any
revival of the PKI. In this process, he noted, many military men had
become bupatis, directors-general, governors, and ambassadors.
This involvement "has now gone too far and this has given rise to
unnecessary weaknesses." What was needed was a process of "disas-
sociation." However, such a process must run smoothly so as not to
create a vacuum. The home minister, Sumitro thought, was obliged
to prepare civilian leaders for these jobs.
In May 1979, the principles that had been enumerated by Jusuf,
including, inter alia, those dealing with the role of ABRI as a social
force, had been set out in a pocket-sized, 110-page "blue book."
With regard to the relationship between ABRI and the political parties
and Golkar, this affirmed that ABRI as a social force had a position
equal to the political parties and Golkar; there was no subordination
and none should feel superior to the other. ABRI, the blue book
stressed, always regarded the political parties and Golkar as partners
in the struggle, and worked side by side with them in making a suc-
cess of the development program, creating a steady and dynamic na-
tional stability and promoting national resilience.1+0 The chief of staff
for functional affairs, Lt. Gen. Charis Suhud, made exactly the same
points when addressing mid-career officers at Seskoad on August 11,
1979.1+1
By October 1979, those principles had apparently gone by the
board. ABRI had climbed into bed with Golkar yet again and had
confirmed that it was in fact a member of the "big Golkar family."
The story of how this happened provides some telling insights into
the way Indonesia was governed in the late 1970s.
Suharto, it seems clear, had recognized the need to bridge the
gap between the armed forces and the community and had given his
blessing to Jusuf’s attempts to present a new-look ABRI. However,
the president was enough of a realist to know that, while there were
40.	See ABRI Sebagai Kekuatan Social, p. 34.
41.	See Ceramah Kaskar Hankam Tentang Kekaryan ABRi didepan
Siswa Peserta Seskoad pada tanggal 11 Augustus ’79 di Bandung
(Departemen Kejuangan, Seskoad, 1979).146
obvious benefits to be gained by such an approach, there were po-
tential dangers as well. In Suharto's view, ABRI and Golkar appear
to have been indivisible and, if Jusuf were to run too far with the
"ABRI-above-all-groups" ball, it would almost certainly undermine
Golkar's position at the 1982 elections.
On the evidence available, it appears that Suharto resolved this
dilemma by being all things to all men—at least in the initial stages.
He gave his backing to Jusuf and let him make the running about the
role that ABRI would play. At the same time, he covered his bets by
having Sudomo privately reassure senior officers that nothing had
really changed, and that in the next election government policy
would, in effect, be "more of the same." Long before the October
1979 meeting at which it was affirmed that ABRI was "absolutely
Golkar," the evidence suggests, Suharto employed Sudomo to under-
mine Jusuf.
At the Rapat Gubernur (governors' meeting) in January 1979,
Jusuf stressed that governors were civilian officials within the De-
partment of Internal Affairs. Although a governor might be a mili-
tary man, the defense minister said, he was not to treat the job as a
military position; civilians working in the governor's office should be
brought into things and made to feel part of a team, and there should
be no military-type parades at provincial government offices. Later
the same day, Sudomo addressed the conference and provided an "ex-
planation" of the ABRI position which, in the opinion of many of
those present, was directly at variance with that of the minister of
defense. Returning the next morning, Sudomo sent all civilian offi-
cials from the room and "clarified" Jusuf's statement in even stronger
terms.42 Such a policy, it is suggested, had two attractions. On
the one hand, it allowed the government, the army, and the president
to benefit from the considerable goodwill that Jusuf was generating,
while in no way threatening the outcome of the 1982 election. On the
other, it would leave Jusuf, whose popularity was by now quite ex-
tensive, highly vulnerable when the wind eventually changed, as it
was bound to.
Jusuf and Sudomo, Suharto's two principal instruments in this
endeavor, were very different from one another, although both were
Suharto loyalists and both owed their positions to Suharto. Jusuf, a
member of the Buginese nobility, had been one of the three offi-
cers—in his view the principal officer—who had persuaded Sukarno to
sign the March 11 (Supersemar) Order of 1966 which transferred
authority to Suharto. He had been considered a loyal member of the
Suharto team ever since. His appointment as minister of defense/
commander of the armed forces, which had come as a complete sur-
prise in the army, had been a reminder not only that Suharto re-
warded his most loyal lieutenants and chose key ABRI officers from
among them but that he still wielded extraordinary power over the
armed forces. It was in almost every way an artful political move.
42. Confidential communication, December 27, 1979.147
jusuf had always been a loner; he had never been a member of any
particular clique, and he had neither a strong divisional background
nor an independent power base. He was, moreover, an Outer Is-
lander and a devout Muslim. Long before his arbitrary command style
and his sublime disregard for paperwork had antagonized many senior
staff officers at Hankam, it had been apparent that Jusuf was un-
likely ever to pose any sort of a threat to Suharto. In that sense,
his appointment had been a master stroke; from Suharto’s point of
view, it was all pluses and no minuses.
Sudomo was a very different kind of officer. First associated
with Suharto in 1961, when he was commander of the naval forces
assigned to Suharto’s Mandala Command for the liberation of West
Irian, he had polished up his pro-Suharto credentials during his term
as chief of staff of the navy between 1969 and 1973, disposing of
whole concourses of leftist and pro-Sukarno officers, and doing it
with such singlemindedness and despatch that it had become some-
thing of a joke amongst those in the Suharto group that, if Sudomo
did not stop soon, the Indonesian Navy might be left with a number
of ships but no officers to command them. (By his own count,
Sudomo ’’disposed of” 1,500 naval officers at this time.) He had been
rewarded with the post of chief of staff of Kopkamtib under General
Sumitro, and, despite a shaky start during Malari, had held on to the
position after Sumitro's fall. In 1978, his loyalty and responsiveness
to the presidential will established beyond question, he had assumed
the mantle of Pangkopkamtib (commander of Kopkamtib) from Suharto.
Sudomo was a Suharto man through and through, with no political am-
bitions of his own. (In fact, by the late 1970s Sudomo was making it
plain that he wanted to retire; it was Suharto who, needing Sudomo
as part of his grand design, insisted that he stay on.) And even if
he had had ambitions, his religion—he had converted to Christianity
in order to marry—and his service affiliation would have made it im-
possible for him to move any higher in an environment that was domi-
nated by the army and that was at least nominally Muslim. At first
glance, Sudomo struck many people as bland, affable, and good-
natured, if perhaps a little shallow. Some retired senior officers,
particularly those out of favor with the ruling group, spoke of him
disparagingly and made him the butt of their private jokes. (Ali
Sadikin, who had once been Sudomo's commanding officer and who was
a lieutenant general long before Sudomo received his third star,
tended to look on the admiral as a derisory figure and make unkind
comments about his competence.)^3 But Sudomo was loyal, hard-
working (when Jusuf was off on his travels Sudomo regularly signed
200 of the most important Hankam documents a day), powerful, and,
above all, "pragmatic.” If Suharto had decided fairly early in the
piece that it would be necessary to keep a rein on Jusuf and ensure
that the talk about ABRI's neutrality did not jeopardize the electoral
interests of Golkar, then Sudomo would have been an ideal instrument
43. Confidential communication, June 4, 1980. Several other retired
officers made the same point.148
for his purposes. In his capacity as deputy commander of the armed
forces, Sudomo was subordinate to Jusuf. But as the commander of
Kopkamtib, he had direct access to Suharto and could, in fact, meet
the president at any time he wished. Equally important, he had di-
rect access to the all-important Kodam commanders in their capacity
as regional executive agents of Kopkamtib. As we have seen, each
Kodam commander was chairman of the Muspida (Provincial Leadership
Council) and, until the late 1970s, chairman of the local Golkar Con-
trol Board. Moreover, with Jusuf away so often and disinclined to
immerse himself in paperwork, Sudomo, as deputy commander of the
armed forces, was in an ideal position to "remind" senior officers that
one had to be realistic, to emphasize that, whatever Jusuf might be
saying in public, there was no intention on anyone’s part in Jakarta
to ignore the wellbeing of Golkar.
In 1983, after he had taken up a new position as minister for
manpower, Sudomo confirmed that he had indeed played such a role.
By and large, he said, his actions could be described by the Java-
nese word ngemong—he had sought to avoid any confrontation in his
relations with Jusuf. But sometimes he would take a more conven-
tional "military management" approach and point out privately to the
minister that he had made a mistake in a certain statement; on these
occasions, Jusuf would quite readily allow him to clarify the remark.
At other times, he would just go ahead and correct the mistake any-
way. "I considered all the time my position at Kopkamtib," Sudomo
said. "Because I am not under him at Kopkamtib; I’m under the
president." At times, Sudomo would actually raise a Jusuf statement
with the president, who would say: "You have to change that!
By their very nature, these differences took place out of public
view. But at the end of 1979 a document surfaced which brought the
contradictions in the Suharto approach to light, an embarrassing de-
velopment for the ruling group. This document recorded details of a
secret meeting Sudomo had held with the Golkar Central Executive
(DPP) on October 17, 1979 after meeting with the president earlier
that morning. Twelve months to the day after Widodo had endorsed a
document in which it was affirmed that the army would endanger its
unity and identity if it relied on any one group in society, Sudomo
here made it perfectly clear that ABRI was "absolutely Golkar" and a
key member of "the big Golkar family. "U5 Copies of this secret
Golkar memorandum were later to find their way into the hands of
various opposition figures, much to the embarrassment of the govern-
ment. If the document was genuine—and it seems beyond doubt that
it was—then it suggests that the ruling group was capable of a quite
extraordinary degree of cynicism and duplicity.
44.	Interview with Admiral Sudomo, August 6, 1983.
45.	See Hasi I Pertemuon DPP Golkar dan Wapangab Pangkopkamtib
(Jakarta:	Dewan Pimpinan Pusat, Golongan Karya, Sekretariat
Jendral, Jl. Majapahit 29, October 17, 1979). The document is signed
by the secretary general of the DPP Golkar, Sugianto.149
The Golkar document, which ran to four pages and a little over
1 ,000 words, was typed on paper bearing the Golkar letterhead and
with the signature and "chop” of the Golkar secretary general,
Sugianto. According to it, the meeting between Sudomo and an
eleven-man Golkar DPP delegation was held between 8 and 9:30 a.m.
on October 17, at the Ministry of Defense building, with Sudomo
reportedly speaking for and on behalf of the Ministry of Defense and
Security. The Golkar delegation included the general chairman, Maj.
Gen. Amir Murtono, the four deputy chairmen (Brig. Gen. Sugandhi,
H. Moch. Tarmudji, Lt. Gen. Sugih Arto, and David Napitupulu),
and Sugianto.
The document indicated that at the meeting, an agreement was
reached to form a forum for periodic consultations between Hankam/
ABRI and the DPP Golkar both at the central and provincial levels.
The regular liaison officers were to be Sukardi, representing the DPP
Golkar, and Col. Harisugiman, representing Hankam.1+6 At the cen-
tral level, these consultations would be held between the DPP Golkar
and Hankam, which would be represented by Sudomo.1+7 At the prov-
ince level, the consultations would take place between the Dewan
Pimpinan Daerah (DPD, Provincial Executive Board) and the military
region commander acting in his capacity as Laksusda (special executor
of Kopkamtib). These forums, which were to be limited and closed,
would seek the optimal syncronization of actions taken within "the big
Golkar family." It had been agreed, the document said, that in the
near future Sudomo and members of the DPP Golkar would make unan-
nounced visits to the regions. The aim, amongst other things, was
to explain the relationship and position of Golkar within the
three-lane framework of the big Golkar family (Golkar-Korpri-ABRI)
in efforts to ensure a Golkar victory in the 1982 general elections.
The document continued: "In this meeting it is affirmed that ABRI is
absolutely Golkar. This is in line with President Suharto's affirmation
to the same effect in the meeting with the deputy ABRI commander/
Kopkamtib commander at 7 a.m. on Wednesday, October 17, 1979.1,48
If that document suggested that ABRI and Golkar were getting
together again despite Jusuf's assurances to the contrary, then there
was more to come. A three-and-a-quarter page "draft memorandum"
allegedly hammered out by Golkar officials between October 18 and 20
seemed to force an already sensitive issue by deliberately juxtaposing
Jusuf's words with Sudomo's purported statements. The problem fac-
ing the Golkar leaders was the apparent "contradiction" to which Ali
Sadikin had referred only one week earlier. "If ABRI is really one
with the people and does not side with any one group," Sadikin had
asked, "why is there a Big Golkar Family which is composed of
46.	Ibid. Harisugiman was the Spri (personal assistant) to Admiral
Sudomo.
47.	There was no mention in the document of Jusuf.
48.	See Hasil Pertemuon DPP Golkar dan Wapangab/Pangkopkamtib.150
Korpri, Golkar, and ABRI?,,l+9 The "Draft Memorandum on the Inter-
nal Mechanism of the Big Golkar Family" came up with a novel answer
to this question.
It made plain that the Golkar leaders felt that they were dealing
with a matter of fundamental importance to the future development of
their organization. Golkar had been established fifteen years earlier
as a joint secretariat with the aim of enforcing the unity of the socio-
political forces in confronting the dominating role of the Communist
Party. After the coup attempt, the memorandum said, Golkar had be-
come the mainstay of the sociopolitical forces supporting the New
Order. In 1975 the existence of Golkar and the two restructured
political parties had been formally recognized, and Golkar had then
been able to form a majority in both the MPR and the DPR, and had
participated in drawing up the Broad Outlines of State Policy. The
growth and development of the Golkar family, of which Korpri and
ABRI were "supporting components," was positive, as these two com-
ponents were not sociopolitical forces in their own right. At the same
time, the document quickly added, "the organization of relations with-
in the body of the Big Golkar Family is totally an internal issue of
Golkar, which has formal legal status as a sociopolitical force." Be-
cause Golkar was recognized as a sociopolitical force and because
Korpri and ABRI did not possess this function, the memorandum went
on, problems had arisen regarding the relationship between Golkar
and these two components.50 Many complications had arisen, result-
ing in the lack of development of Golkar's role as the biggest sociopo-
litical force. Meanwhile, Golkar's other two components were "in-
creasingly holding prominent roles." Such a state of affairs could
lead to overlapping and "defunctionalization" in Golkar and open the
way for an abuse of authority by irresponsible parties. The state-
ments of the minister of defense about ABRI-people unity and the im-
portance of ABRI remaining above all groups must be interpreted as
meaning that, as a stabilizer, ABRI must indeed stand above all
groups but that, as a group which implements its dual functions
through the kekaryaan system, ABRI was still a functional group and
a component of Golkar and would develop and grow as one of Golkar's
three elements. The memorandum concluded by saying that the All-
Indonesia Golkar Leadership Conference was of the opinion that the
matters outlined in the document should be submitted to the chairman
of the Golkar Supervisory Board (Suharto) in order that he might or-
ganize the best coordination possible.
Several things can be said about this memorandum. The first
is that the legalistic hairsplitting about ABRI having a role to play at
two levels was unlikely to have any practical effect. It was hardly a
sufficient argument to convince such critics as Sadikin, and many
even within Golkar in fact dismissed it, particularly the hard-nosed
49.	Kompas, October 12, 1979.
50.	See "Rancangan Memorandum Tentang Mekanisme Intern Keluarga
Besar Golongan Karva" (unsigned), Jakarta, October 20, 1979.151
pragmatists of the Ali Murtopo group, a sure indication, it might be
noted, that it was the brainchild of a rival power center, perhaps the
one associated with Amir Murtono. And, more important still, this
sort of argument was not likely to have much impact on Suharto, the
man to whom the issue was being conveyed for further action. Su-
harto, of all people, was little interested in abstract arguments about
such matters. His concept of power was essentially Javanese, one in
which these niceties had little relevance. Besides, if Korpri and
ABR, were flexing their muscles to the detriment of Golkar, then it
was the president who had allowed this to happen. All the same, it
is interesting to see the efforts that were being made by some in
Golkar to come up with answers to the criticisms that had been
launched against the existing system.
When photocopies of the October 17 ABRI-Golkar document be-
gan to surface barely a month later, it led, not surprisingly, to an
immediate political storm. ”l have an authentic document that ABRI
and Golkar are not going to part company,” Lt. Gen. A. J. Moko-
ginta, a member of the LKB (Lembaaa Kesadaran Berkonstitusi, Insti-
tute of Constitutional Awareness) said in a hearing with the PPP
grouping (F-PP) late in November: "ABRI is still included in the big
Golkar family. In that case, what is the 1982 general election going
to be like? If ABRI does not stand above all groups, the next gen-
eral election in 1982 is not going to be far different from the previous
general elections.1,51 Anwar Nurris, an F-PP member, replied that he
too had a copy of the document, and asked rhetorically, if it was
true that ABRI was still included in the big Golkar family, what sort
of implementation could one expect of Jusuf’s statement that ABRI
must stand above all sociopolitical forces. The document's existence,
said Nurris, caused his grouping rather to doubt Jusuf's statement.52
An editorial in Pe/ita, the pro-PPP daily, took up the matter. "Is It
True That ABRI is Taking Sides?" asked a headline over an editorial
in the paper on December 4. The editorial went on to note that
"there is an indication, which had its source in the general public, of
a new form of relationship between ABRI and Golkar, namely ABRI is
absolutely Golkar within the framework of the three-lanes big family
to win the 1982 general elections.1,53
In an interview, Mokoginta said that ABRI as an organization
must have the principle of not taking sides. it was natural for
ABRI, which consisted of ordinary human beings, to tend to sympa-
thize with a certain group. But "even though for instance, 99 per-
cent of the ABRI members sympathize with Golkar, it cannot be offi-
51.	See "Wednesday Morning Commitment," Tempo, December 15,
1979. USE.
52.	Ibid.
53.	Pe/ita, December 4, 1979, as quoted in Tempo, December 15,
1979. USE.152
cially included in the big Golkar family.”54 Mokoginta admitted that
Golkar was ’’born” of ABRI in a pressing situation. In the second
army seminar of 1966 which he had attended, the ABRI leaders had
seen the need for increasing the groups that did not want PKI and
other political parties. However, when it had grown up, the child
that had been brought to birth by ABRI should be left to live on its
own. Golkar’s two absolute victories in the general elections showed
that it was time for ABRI to leave Golkar on its own. "Let Golkar
develop on its own," said Mokoginta. "Leave Golkar alone so that in
the next qeneral election in 1982 we'll see where the people’s sympa-
thy is. ”5^
Faced with an outcry over the document, Hankam and Golkar
felt obliged to issue "denials." A close examination of these state-
ments reveals, however, that the "denials" were in fact something
less than that. Sukardi, a retired ABRI officer who, according to
the document, was to represent Golkar as a liaison officer, was the
most unequivocal in his wording; "As chairman of the Golkar DPP I’ve
never heard or read such a written commitment. I fully support the
statement of General Jusuf that ABRI is not taking sides with any
group. ABRI is to take sides with all people, as ABRI is a fighter
that should become one with the people."56 Sukardi conceded, how-
ever, that ABRI, in its struggle, would seek a partner, a phrase
that would be given the presidential imprimatur six months later. "I
believe," he said, "ABRI in its impartial position will support the
sociopolitical forces that have the 1945 Constitution and Pancasila as
their aim of struggle." All the sociopolitical forces in Indonesia had
nearly the same aim but it was "up to ABRI to choose which sociopo-
litical forces . . . are closest to its aims of struggle."57 Sukardi’s
statement may have helped get Golkar off the hook, but it was, on
the most generous interpretation, designed to mislead and deceive.
And while it is true that Sukardi had not been present at the October
17 meeting at Hankam, it seems difficult to believe that he had
neither heard of nor read the document.
The Hankam spokesman, Brig. Gen. Gunarso, phrased his com-
ment with a good deal more care. According to Gunarso, the princi-
ple articulated by Jusuf that ABRI was not taking sides with any one
group would always be adhered to by the entire armed forces. It
was true that on October 17 a meeting had been held between the
Golkar DPP and Sudomo. "All persons can meet with the deputy
ABRI commander," he said. "But this doesn't mean they will then
make a policy deviating from the regulations of the defense and secu-
54.	Ibid.
55.	Ibid.
56.	Ibid. During the independence struggle Sukardi is said to have
worked for the Dutch army as an auto mechanic. He was not highly
regarded by members of Fosko.
57.	Ibid.153
rity minister. The community should not let itself be influenced by
such an issue.”58
Sudomo, finding himself in an invidious position, was decidedly
ill-at-ease when asked during an interview for a categorical denial
that there had been any secret agreement with Golkar, his apparent
discomfort being shared by Gunarso and his deputy, both of whom
were present. After repeatedly sidestepping the question, he came
out with a flat denial. ’’There was no agreement between me and
Golkar,” he said. "With this fake document, certain people are try-
ing to separate Genera, Jusuf and me and to separate Golkar and the
armed forces. They want to put Jusuf in a corner.”59 In the
interview, Sudomo suggested that, while certain matters had been
discussed during the meeting, Sugianto had failed to record the de-
liberations accurately. Genera, Jasin, who had been Sugianto’s com-
manding officer in East Java, found this suggestion intolerable: "He
[Sugianto] was waki, asisten I [deputy assistant for intelligence] in
East Java. I know him. He is very clever. He cannot make a mis-
take (about something like that).80
Another source, while disputing Jasin's suggestion that
Sugianto was clever, conceded quite readily that the document con-
tained a faithful record of the October 17 meeting. According to this
official, Sudomo had said that no one except his secretary was to take
notes. However, Sugianto had asked Awan Karmawan Burhan SH,
one of the three deputy secretaries of Golkar, to make notes. Awan,
who was from West Java, had sent a copy to the West Java governor’s
office thinking, correctly but somewhat disingenuously, that this was
an important development. "Pretty soon everyone had a copy,” said
this official with some despair. "You know in this country not even
two people can keep a secret. Photocopying is only Rp 30 (5c)!"61
The document drawn up by Sugianto contained a complete and accu-
rate record of the October 17 meeting, according to this official.
Sudomo, exasperated at Sugianto’s ineptitude, had said, ”1 don't want
to set eyes on that man again!"82 That, however, was the extent of
the concern; government and Golkar leaders were embarrassed that
news of the secret agreement had leaked out, but none suggested
that the agreement should not have been made in the first place. In
an interview eight months after the October meeting, one official dis-
missed criticism of the Golkar-Hankam deal in language typical of that
58.	Ibid.
59.	Interview with Admiral Sudomo, December 17, 1979.
60.	Interview with Lt. Gen. Jasin, May 23, 1980.
61.	Interview with a member of the Dewan Pimpinan Pusat Golkar,
July 3, 1981.
62.	Ibid.154
used by the "pragmatists.” "What do they expect?" he asked.
"That’s politics.1,63
Put Not Your Trust in Princes
If Suharto and Sudomo had put paid to any notion that ABRI
would stand above all groupings in future, what then of Jusuf?
Where did he stand and was it possible that he too was a party to the
deception? At least one Indonesian political scientist seems convinced
that he was—at least to some extent. In May 1980, Dr. Juwono
Sudarsono of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Indo-
nesia maintained that there was a "tacit agreement" between Jusuf and
Suharto. "All along, Jusuf has been playing the game of accommoda-
tion with Islam," Juwono said. "But I think he’ll conveniently drop
the platform in the run-up to the ’82 election. "6i+
This sort of skepticism may have been warranted to some ex-
tent. In an interview nine months earlier, one senior general had
claimed that it would be wrong to put too much weight on Jusuf’s as-
surances about ABRI being above all groups. "Jusuf may say some-
thing like that in public," this officer said, "but he says something
else to me and [my colleagues] in private. So (in 1982) we will do
the same things. I can assure you that at the polling booth it is
99.9 percent honest. It is beforehand where we give our support for
Golkar."65
Jusuf, it is true, had earned a reputation as a somewhat devi-
ous and duplicitous man. "Jusuf was very good at manoeuvering,"
according to a source familiar with his early career in South Sulawesi.
"He got rid of layers of officers above him by getting them involved
in the rebellion and he came out, if not smelling like a rose, then at
least looking pretty good."66 It is significant, according to this
source, that both Jusuf’s admirers and his detractors often make the
point that he has no loyalty to his family or to people who have
helped him in the past. Jusuf, it is said, makes his decisions in
terms of the present and the future; this is proffered as a criticism
by some and as praise by others. Another criticism of the defense
minister was that, despite all the talk, he had never shown any pro-
nounced democratic leanings. He had, his opponents conceded, a
certain populist air, a certain flair and plausibility. But his ap-
63.	Ibid.
64.	Asiaweek, May 9, 1980, p. 21.
65.	Confidential communication, August 1979.
66.	Confidential communication. Jusuf was No. 57 on the list of
Permesta officers who rebelled against the central government in 1957.
However, he sided with Jakarta soon afterwards and later became
very close to Sukarno.155
proach had always been essentially paternalistic and authoritarian,
one of "noblesse oblige."
On the other hand, it would be wrong to see Jusuf as a mal-
leable instrument in Suharto’s hands. Jusuf gave the impression of
feeling in no sense inferior to the president, unlike so many others
who seemed to go out of their way to defer to the Head of State.
There was in Jusuf’s manner a calm self-assurance, a sense of hubris
almost, an inner certitude and aloofness that bordered at times on ar-
rogance. Intensely proud of his Buginese origins, conscious of his
elevated social status and his preeminent position as one of the three
officers—the officer, as he told it—who had arranged the transfer of
authority from Sukarno to Suharto, he was not inclined to be swept
into anyone else's orbit unless it was on what he considered to be his
terms. Suharto might be president but Jusuf did not seem to be par-
ticularly overawed by that. (He had, according to one account, been
present in Makassar in 1950 when Colonel Alex Kawilarang struck Lt.
Col. Suharto for some blunder committed by the latter’s troops—and
had not forgotten the scene.)67
Jusuf had a private catalog of complaints about the style and
substance of Suharto's rule. He disapproved of the corruption and
greed of many of those in power and was openly contemptuous of
those leaders who had used their public position to enhance their pri-
vate wealth. He appeared to have little time for the first lady or
those in her circle. More importantly, he disliked the way Suharto
put so much trust in the technocrat ministers, despite (perhaps be-
cause of) the fact that he had served so long as the only military
minister in an essentially "technocratic" department. He disliked the
technocrats for their apparent obsession with plans and programs and
macro thinking, for their apparent disregard for the rakyat (people).
(In this, he had something in common with Adam Malik.) He disliked
them for what he saw as their overdependence on institutions like the
World Bank and the IMF, a dependence which, in his highly national-
istic view, undermined Indonesia’s pride and self-identity.
Jusuf did have a vision of the sort of Indonesia he wanted to
see, and at times it seemed to have more in common with the vision of
men like Widodo, Sutopo Juwono, and the retired generals in Fosko,
than it did with that of Suharto. But he seemed no more capable of
achieving it than did any of the others. Jusuf’s shortcoming was not
that he made statements with a cynical disregard for their meaning.
It was more that he did not have the opportunity—and, some of his
fellow officers felt, the courage—to do what he would have liked to
do. And it was this which was to prove so disappointing to those
who expected more of him.
Jusuf, who seemed incapable of building up a team of his own
—he wanted, said Nasution, to kick all the goals himself—had, with
67. Kawilarang denies that he struck Suharto but concedes that it
was necessary to admonish him. Interview with Col. A. E.
Kawilarang, November 7, 1981.156
whatever reservations, gone along with all that Suharto had done.
Nasution had put great store on his early actions, seeing in them an
inevitable return to a ’’purified" military role. But by 1981 he had
become disenchanted with his former subordinate. Suharto had
cracked down on dissent in a hard-hitting speech at Pekanbaru and
dismissed complaints made in a petition signed by fifty prominent
people, but Jusuf had done nothing.
He said the army has to protect people, give them the
chance and so on. You have the problem of the Petisi
and so on. And people, students, come to see him, and
he refuses to receive them. So there are no deeds be-
hind the words. And I think it’s characteristic. I know
when he was a younger officer [there were] these prob-
lems also. You cannot change your personality. He has
always been on [the side of] what is safe. He takes the
safe approach. He doesn’t take risks.68
Widodo spoke even more bitterly, Jusuf, he said, should have
implemented all that he had said about ABRI standing above all
groups. Jusuf had spoken every day about the need for change.
But his actions had not been consistent with his words. He may have
believed what he said, but he did not have the courage to fight for
it:	"I criticized him, 'You don’t have the courage.’ I think that if
he talks with the president he does not have the courage to advise
the president.”69 Jusuf talked, said Widodo, but there was "no ac-
tion." These sentiments were echoed by Dharsono. "Most of us are
disappointed," he said. It was hard to tell whether Jusuf had ever
meant what he had said—"we are not quite sure ourselves. ... We
had quite a lot of respect for him when he became the Menhankam be-
cause of the statements he made about a new life in the army and so
on. Later on we were not quite sure whether he was really willing to
carry out what he had been saying. So for me personally he is still
a question mark, a big one . . . after the Petisi 50 we never had the
chance to see him anymore. I had quite easy access to him be-
fore."70 Jusuf had become distant, Dharsono said. At the same time
"perhaps at this moment he is the only man who can change the atti-
tude of the army—if he wants to."71
It may have been that Jusuf, recognizing the hopelessness of
further struggle after Pekanbaru, had decided to lie low. Widodo had
tried and failed and was now on the sidelines, and it was necessary
to remain in power if one sought to change the system. The danger
with this course of action, as Jusuf must have been well aware, was
that the chance to do something might never present itself again.
68.	Interview	with	General	Nasution, July 24,	1981.
69.	Interview	with	General	Widodo, November	17, 1981.
70.	Interview	with	Lt. Gen	. Dharsono, November 12, 1981	
71.	Ibid.				CHAPTER SEVEN
THE STORM OVER PEKANBARU
. .	. two-thirds of the members [of the MPR] can, if
they wish, change the Constitution. [But] ABR! does
not wish to have a change, and if there is a change, it is
its duty to use weapons. . . . Rather than using weap-
ons in facing a change of the 1945 Constitution and
Pancasila, we had better kidnap one out of the two-thirds
who wish to make the change, because two-thirds minus
one is not valid according to the 1945 Constitution.
—President Suharto, March 19801
If Sudomo had confirmed in the October 17 meeting that ABRI
was part of the big Golkar family then it only remained for Suharto to
put the presidential imprimatur on such an understanding. This he
did in March 1980. Speaking extemporaneously at the RAPIM ABRI
(Armed Forces Commanders' Meeting) in the central Sumatran oil town
of Pekanbaru on March 27, the president hit out at political opponents
and offered some fairly controversial thoughts about the army's role
in society. "Before the New Order was born," he said "we saw and
sensed that our national ideology was submerged by various existing
ideologies, whether it was Marxism, Leninism, communism, socialism,
Marhaenism, nationalism, or religion."2 Croups which adhered to
these various ideologies had sought, once they considered themselves
strong enough, to impose their will on other groups by force. "And
so there were unending rebellions," all of which had been obstacles to
the creation of a just and prosperous society based on Pancasila.
"Hence the determination of the New Order to make a total correction
of deviations from Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution."3 According
to Suharto, there was a certain "party or group which does not yet
trust Pancasila 100 percent." ABRI had to make a success of its dual
function in society, he said, and "so long as we cannot succeed in
bringing [this group] to their senses we must always step up our
vigilance, choose partners, friends who truly defend Pancasila and
1.	President Suharto's speech at Pekanbaru, March 27, 1980. See
Tempo, June 14, 1980. USE.
2.	A transcript of this speech was published in Kompas, April 8,
1980.
3.	Ibid.
157158
have no doubts whatsoever in Pancasila.,,u Although the president
did not specify which party he meant, he did refer to the '’walk-out”
during the MPR discussion of the P-4 (Guide to Understanding and
implementing Pancasila) problem. Another walk-out had occurred
when Parliament was finishing its deliberations on the General Elec-
tions Bill. As the PPP (and, more specifically, the NU faction of the
PPP) had been the only party involved in these actions, it was not
hard to guess which group the president had in mind.
Given the political outlook of those in power, the basic theme of
the president's remarks came as no surprise. But Suharto, by casu-
ally adding socialism, Marhaenism, nationalism, and religion to the list
of discredited philosophies, managed to raise the hackles of just about
every important political or social group in the country. He upset
the socialists, upset the secular nationalists, upset the Muslims.
Even some who were genuinely apolitical were stunned at his passing
swipe at nationalism. "What does he mean?" asked retired Air Vice
Marshall Suyitno Sukirno, a former ambassador to Australia. "He men-
tions nationalism in his speech. It is crazy. We are all nationalists.
I was a nationalist at the age of sixteen before the word Pancasila
had even been coined.”4 5
At the same time, Suharto's no-nonsense warning that ABRI
would once again have to "choose friends" who supported Pancasila
(in other words throw its weight behind Golkar in the 1982 general
election) offended those who had believed Jusuf's assurances that
ABRI would in future stand above all groups.
What was the significance of this outburst at Pekanbaru? What
prompted Suharto to speak out in such uncharacteristically forthright
language? First, it seems clear that he was genuinely angry and ag-
grieved that the NU had walked out of the discussion on the P-4 and
the election bill. That action was like a red rag to a bull; it was
proof, in Suharto's eyes, that there were elements within the Islamic
political movement who were not to be trusted. More than anything
else, the Pekanbaru speech gave expression to Suharto's underlying
concern, his obsession almost, that there were groups seeking to
change Pancasila. The president, although he sought assiduously to
project the aura of a traditional Javanese king—patient, restrained,
even-tempered, and judicious, a man of inner calm and effortless
self-control—was given to periodic emotional outbursts in which he
would lash out, almost blindly, at those who had crossed him. The
March 27 speech was one such occasion. (Two weeks before Pekan-
baru, Suharto had shown signs of irritation over the constant sniping
that was coming from the retired "seniors." At a meeting with the
Golkar "Central Committee" at his home in Jalan Cendana on March
14, he described these officers as "renegades." It was the govern-
ment's duty to talk with them, to appeal to them, he said. But,
4.	Ibid.
5.	Interview with Air Vice Marshall Suyitno Sukirno.159
if they did not change their ways, the government would be entitled
to write them off as "traitors.")°
Secondly, Suharto was making it abundantly clear that, what-
ever Jusuf might have been permitted to say, ABRI and Golkar were
still virtually one and the same. Indeed, according to General
Sumitro, the president was "a little bit angry, upset actually" by a
speech Jusuf had made at Pekanbaru stressing the now familiar theme
that the armed forces should be above all groups.6 7 In the view of
those around Suharto, it was "unrealistic" to argue—as Jusuf,
Widodo, Sutopo Juwono, and the retired generals were arguing—that
ABRI should stand above. If ABRI did that, Sumitro had noted, the
PPP would win the election. And if that happened, "ABRI will hit
again."8 At Pekanbaru, Suharto seemed to be making it fairly clear
that the campaign was on, not just for the 1982 general election but
for the 1983 presidential election as well, and that he was off and
running for a fourth five-year term. In his speech, the president
established the need for his own continuing presence. Islam was
identified as the threat and ABRI as the one force that could safe-
guard the Pancasila.
It was also possible to detect an added self-assurance, a cocki-
ness even, in Suharto's approach, "it has been so long now since he
had any opposition in the government," the senior editorial writer of
one of the nation's leading dailies noted three weeks before the
Pekanbaru speech. "There is no one like Sumitro anymore, no one
like Ibnu Sutowo." Ali Murtopo had been on the sidelines since his
heart attack in 1978. "He [Ali] does nothing. Can you imagine the
old Ali Murtopo at a time like this? He would be involved in every-
thing."9 10 Suharto's willingness to chance his hand on the US$850 mil-
lion Dumai hydrocracker project in which his personal cukong (finan-
cier), Liem Sioe Liong, acted as an intermediary in what would nor-
mally have been a Pertamina project, could be seen as an example of
the president's heightened self-assurance, in this view. "It is a very
Javanese thing. You are very cautious at first. Then you get over-
confident."
There is much to commend this view. In the fifteen years since
he had come to power Suharto had changed quite considerably. He
had become more rigid, more authoritarian, more feudalistic, more
mystical, more cynical, more corrupt, very much less inclined to lis-
ten to criticism. 0 In his early years as acting president and then
6.	Confidential communication, April 1980.
7.	Interview with General Sumitro, December 12, 1981.
8.	Ibid.
9.	Confidential communication with Indonesian editorial writer.
10.	I am indebted to Ben Anderson for drawing my attention to this
point and to both Adam Malik and Mochtar Lubis for their observa-160
president, Suharto had relied to a quite considerable degree on his
civilian as well as his military advisers, and in particular on Sultan
Hamengku Buwono IX and Adam Malik, the two other members of the
initial ruling triumvirate. He always sought—and listened to—their
advice. Before long, that began to change. Increasingly confident
of his ability to handle his new responsibilities and with the close
support and advice of military associates like Ali Murtopo, he began
showing signs of irritation at the advice being proffered by men like
Malik and the Sultan. Once he had made a decision, it was impossible
to persuade him to change his mind, even if it could be shown that
the decision was wrong. At the same time, there were factors at
work that made such a change almost inevitable. Suharto may have
emasculated the political parties, may have muzzled the press,
clamped down on the students, and thrown many of his opponents in-
to jail. But he had also achieved much in his years as president.
The economy was moving ahead, oil and timber revenues were pouring
in, rice production had doubled, new schools were going up and new
roads being built all over the archipelago. Almost every other day,
the president was cutting the ribbon at yet another US$800 million oil
refinery or hydrocracker plant, opening yet another provincial airport
or hospital or highway or port facility. Confronted wherever he went
by this physical evidence of Indonesia's successful development, by
the new dams and aluminum projects, generators turning, power har-
nessed for the good of the nation, he can only have become increas-
ingly convinced that Indonesia was locked onto the correct course,
that he knew what was needed, what worked, and that the carping of
his critics was not worth considering. The great deference with
which he was treated by his most senior advisers and cabinet minis-
ters, and not just the Javanese amongst them, can only have rein-
forced his sense of conviction about the wisdom of his own policies
and his irritation at the occasional discordant note sounded by men
like Adam Malik.
As his power continued to grow, the president became increas-
ingly preoccupied by "threats" to the Pancasila and to the 1945 Con-
stitution, threats which many felt were greatly overstated. Increas-
ingly, he sought to erect structures that would ensure that no
change would be made to either the state philosophy or to the Consti-
tution. And in the final analysis, ABRI was to be the guarantor that
there would be no such changes.
Three weeks after the Pekanbaru speech, in off-the-cuff re-
marks delivered at the 28th anniversary of the Kopassandha at
Cijantung, West Java, Suharto lashed out again. The targets this
time were "university students and housewives" who spread rumors
that his wife Tien Suharto was receiving commissions and determining
who would win tenders, and who said that he, Suharto, had taken a
tions about the way in which the president's actions began to change
in the late 1960s. Interview with Adam Malik, March 1 , 1984 and
Mochtar Lubis, February 29, 1984.161
well-known actress as his paramour. The president said these rumors
were aimed at removing him from office. However, those who spread
them were forgetting that if they eliminated him others would appear
—citizens and soldiers of the ABRI—who would always thwart their
schemes, especially if they wished to substitute another ideology for
Pancasiia and change the 1945 Constitution.
Suharto's speech at Pekanbaru clearly put Jusuf in an invidious
position. For more than a year the minister of defense had been
stressing that ABRI would stand above all groups. Already undercut
by Sudomo's secret agreement with Golkar, Jusuf’s promises were now
dealt a humiliating blow by the president. Publicly, Jusuf seemed in-
clined to play down any appearance of a rift between himself and the
president. Immediately after the Pekanbaru speech he told a group
of Indonesian editors that Suharto had sought his opinion about the
speech he had been about to make, and he (Jusuf) had encouraged
him to go ahead and deliver it.11 Speaking in private, Jusuf took a
very different tack. When the governor of the National Defense In-
stitute, Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono, spoke to Jusuf not long after the
Pekanbaru speech, he sought the minister's opinion about what
Suharto had said. Jusuf replied, "That is not according to what the
army represents." If he had to talk about this question in future,
Jusuf said, he intended to stress what the president had said in his
Armed Forces Day speech on October 5, 1979. According to Sutopo
Juwono, Jusuf "has the same idea as us actually. And he said 'If I
have to talk about this I will always base my speech on what the
president said before, on October 5. I will take that as my opinion,
not the Pekanbaru opinion but his opinion before Pekanbaru.'" [Italics
added. ]12
If Jusuf was taken aback by Suharto's outburst then so too
were many other Indonesians, including some of the more prominent
retired officers. On April 18, Lt. Gen. Mokoginta sent a nine-page
letter to Jusuf voicing concern at Suharto's remarks at Pekanbaru. 3
On May 2, the FKS Purna Yudha sent a letter, in even stronger
terms, to the new army chief of staff, General Poniman.li+ The let-
11.	Confidential communication with Indonesian editor.
12.	Interview with Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono, July 23, 1981.
13.	Letter from Lt. Gen. Mokoginta to General Jusuf, April 18, 1980.
14.	See Letter of May 2, 1980, from "FKS Purna Yudha," Number
141/FKS/V/80 to General Poniman. The final sentence of the letter
read, "It is to be hoped there will not be any more speeches which
can create restlessness" [Mudah-mudahan janganlah sampai ada
pidato-pidato lagi, yang dapat menimbulkan keresahan]." A copy of
this letter was sent to General Jusuf. Poniman had been installed as
army chief of staff on April 17, 1980, two years after Jusuf became
minister of defense. Widodo, by now out of favor with the ruling
group, was offered a job as ambassador to Australia but declined it.
Interview with General Widodo, November 17, 1981.162
ter, which was signed by Dharsono and Sudirman, prompted Poniman,
acting on the written instructions of Sudomo, to sever the last links
between the army and the FKS; this was done on June I.15
However, the most damaging attack was yet to come. On May
13 a group of fifty Indonesians, including a number of respected el-
der statesmen, presented a one-page ’’Statement of Concern” (Per-
ryataan Keprihatinan) to the DPR.^6 In this document the group
expressed "the heartfelt disappointment” of the Indonesian people with
the Suharto speeches. The document bore the names of two former
prime ministers—Mohammad Natsir and Burhanuddin Harahap; the
head of the revolutionary emergency government, Sjafruddin Pra-
wiranegara; along with those of Generals Nasution, Ali Sadikin,
Hugeng, Mokoginta, and Jasin. The names of several former cabinet
ministers and various Muslim and student critics were also attached.
The petition claimed that the president's speeches made the as-
sumption that a polarization existed between the idea of "preserving
Pancasila" on the one hand and "replacing Pancasila" on the other;
this, the petitioners feared, would breed fresh conflicts among social
groups. The petition said that Suharto had falsely interpreted Pan-
casila in his two speeches so that the state ideology could be used as
a tool to attack his political enemies, whereas the founders of the
Republic had intended it as a tool to unite the nation. The signato-
ries claimed that the president's speeches invited ABRI to take sides,
to choose friends and enemies on the basis of the arbitrary evaluation
of the authorities alone, and not stand above all community groups.
They claimed that the speeches gave the impression that there were
those who considered themselves personifications of Pancasila, so that
"every breath of opposition" to them was interpreted as an anti-
Pancasila attitude. As voters, they called on the representatives of
the people in the DPR and MPR to respond to the two speeches.
This petition, it is clear, contained some rather pointed criticism of
the president. However, it had been artfully worded and delivered
in a constitutional way, making it difficult for the authorities, how-
ever angry, to respond.
Like many of the signatories, Nasution was concerned about the
way the president had zeroed in on Muslims: "Ninety percent of the
Indonesian people are Muslims. It was our mutual understanding from
the start that having Islamic aspirations does not mean that one
doubts the Pancasila; indeed, with a religious mind the followers can
understand the ethics and morals of Pancasila. Bung Karno and
Bung Hatta explained this clearly on many occasions."17
15.	Interview with Lt. Cen. Dharsono, November 7, 1981, and inter-
view with Admiral Sudomo, March 4, 1981.
16.	See "Penyataan Keprihatinan (1980)," the "Statement of Con-
cern," otherwise known as the Petition of Fifty.
17.	Interview with General Nasution, June 17, 1980.163
Chalid Mawardi, an NU politician who was deputy secretary
general of the PPP, echoed this view. The PPP, he said, held that
Pancasila and Islam were identical; they were not contradictory but in
fact complemented each other. Amin Iskandar, a PPP faction leader
in the DPR, added that no leader of the party and no politician from
among the party circles had any ambition to change Pancasila as the
foundation of the state and substitute for it the foundation of an Is-
lamic state.18 The walk-out over the P-4, said Muhammadiyah general
chairman H. A. R. Fachruddin, was performed "not in the anti-
Pancasila framework but in the framework of democracy.1,19 Accord-
ing to K. H. Anwar Musaddad, the deputy Rois A'am (general chair-
man) of the NU Supreme Advisory Council, the walk-out of the PPP
faction at the 1978 MPR session and by the NU group in the adoption
of the general election law was merely a difference of opinion which
was guaranteed by Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution. "Must all
people be yes-men according to Pancasila?" he asked.20 (It is in-
teresting to note that, while Suharto's ire had been aroused by the
actions of NU traditionalists, the prominent Muslim political figures
who signed the petition were modernists associated with the former
Masyumi. Natsir, Burhanuddin, and Sjafruddin had all held high of-
fice in the Masyumi. In 1957-58, these three men had joined the
PRRI rebellion in West Sumatra.)
When, subsequently, a delegation from the "Petisi 50" group
was received by various factions in the DPR, Natsir explained that a
speech by any Head of State was important and nowhere more so than
in Indonesia, where such utterances always had a certain value,
whether as law or instructions or orders. Because of this, he said,
the group of fifty had been very much concerned by the speeches
made by the president in front of army commanders and members of
an elite army command. The speeches, Natsir said, were not wise
and that was why the group was asking the Parliament to consider
the matter. A speech like that at Pekanbaru could endanger national
unity.21 When Natsir had concluded his remarks, several other sig-
18.	See Merdeka, April 3, 1980. USE.
19.	See Tempo, June 14, 1980. USE.
20.	Ibid.
21.	The group, which included Muslims, Catholics, secular national-
ists, retired officers, and members of both the younger and older
generations, were received by the DPR leadership and by each of the
main political groupings. (The meeting with the DPR leadership and
the F-PP took place on May 13, the meeting with the PDI grouping on
May 14, and the meeting with the F-KP [Golkar] on May 16.) The
ABRI faction, which had some initial qualms about meeting a delega-
tion which included civilians, eventually received the group on May
13, having decided that ABRI was already manunggol with the people.
This meeting lasted three hours (despite an initial time limit of one
hour) but was in no sense a dialogue. Suyitno Sukirno read the ini-164
natories made the point that, following the end of the Darul Islam re-
bellion and the crushing of the PKI, the Pancasila was no longer a
problem. All were Pancasilaists; the problem was how to execute the
Pancasila.22
The Jasin Attack
If the men who signed the so-called "Petition of Fifty" had
chosen to lock horns with the president over the Pancasila issue,
there was more to come. When Lt. Gen. Jasin joined the delegation
delivering the protest petition to the DPR in mid-May, he took along
a seven-page document of his own which carried the criticism well be-
yond anything in the petition proper. In this document, Jasin lashed
out at what he labeled the hypocrisy and corruption of the Suharto
government, backing up his charges with what he asserted was a
blow-by-blow account of the way the Head of State had come by his
720-hectare cattle ranch south of Jakarta. "If we tolerate, permit, or
accept the hypocrisy and corruption [of Suharto's New Order govern-
ment]," said Jasin, "we sin against ourselves and the Indonesian na-
tion .1,2 3
In a subsequent interview, Jasin explained that his objective in
submitting the report to Parliament was to change the Indonesian
democratic system. "Given the character of the present president
you cannot expect any change. He will make ABRI a strike force to
help Golkar win the election in 1982. My aim was to wake the people
up, to raise the temperature."24 Suharto, he said, might be as
thick-skinned as an elephant. "But if you give an elephant an injec-
tion every day you can eventually make him weak." If weakening the
president and lowering his credibility was Jasin's aim, he seemed to
tial statement to the faction, whereupon a representative of the ABRI
faction read from a prepared statement of his own. This said in es-
sence that the government had already provided a Parliament in which
people could express their views, and that if anyone had political am-
bitions they could express them through the political parties. The
government had already made the rules and it would be better if
everyone adhered to them. In response, Suyitno Sukirno said that in
1966 the slogan of the New Order was "Dinamisator, Catalisator,
Stabilizator." Now, there were so many other "tor’s"—an oblique
swipe at "koruptors" and "manipulators." The representatives of the
group of fifty were there with the Orde Baru (New Order) spirit, he
said, and wanted a return to the original ideals of the New Order.
The F-PP, like the Fraksi ABRI, had been instructed to avoid a dia-
logue with the group. Interview with Suyitno Sukirno, June 5, 1980.
22.	Ibid.
23.	Statement by Lt. Gen. Jasin, May 9, 1980.
24.	Interview with Lt. Gen. Jasin, May 23, 1980.165
have some initial success. This was the strongest public attack made
against Suharto by a onetime member of the ruling army group and,
despite a domestic press blackout on the affair, news of Jasin's sting-
ing rebuke spread rapidly through the country. Only hours after
Suharto’s security officers had telephoned editors with instructions to
ignore the story, the Jasin document was being run off on copying
machines and distributed on university campuses across the nation.
In one sense, the Jasin document contained little that Indone-
sians had not already known or suspected. Several dozen retired
generals—and a host of civilian critics—had been saying much the
same sort of thing in private for the past ten years or so. But there
was a strong sense of cohesion and esprit de corps among serving
and retired ABRI officers and, until this time, no one had broken
ranks and put the blame so squarely on the president. Suharto,
though still the undoubted master of the Indonesian political scene,
was now being openly attacked on the highly sensitive corruption
issue—the Achilles heel of his regime.
In a country in which criticism of the bopak (father, boss) was
invariably muted and elliptical, the Jasin document came like a slap in
the face. The retired officer began his attack by saying that he had
made his attitudes and opinions about the national leadership clear in
a letter he had sent to Jusuf on February 27. In that letter, he
said, it had been clearly and explicitly stated that the nature of the
Suharto leadership was kemunofikan (hypocritical), and that this had
consequences which influenced all state decisions. Jasin said he real-
ized that the authorities were likely to claim that he was speaking out
because he was anti-Pancasila, anti-1945 Constitution, antidevelop-
ment, frustrated, no longer in an official position, no longer able to
get facilities, or just plain disloyal. But, he added, his criticism was
justified. To back up this claim, the general detailed events which,
he said, proved that Suharto had been hypocritical in both the polit-
ical and the economic field. In the political field, the president had
agreed with Jusuf that ABRI had to stand above all political groups
and acknowledged that it should not take sides. Yet on October 17,
1979, Suharto had instructed Sudomo to map out a joint strategy with
Golkar for another Golkar win in the next election. Jasin’s claims
about hypocrisy in the economic field were even more pointed and
were underpinned by what seemed a considerably body of expert evi-
dence. Suharto, Jasin said, had claimed on various occasions that he
and his son Sigit were only honorary consultants in the company PT
Tiga ”S," which operated two cattle ranches in the foothills behind
Bogor, forty miles south of Jakarta. "What is the truth? The people
ask themselves because, according to natural and simple logic, this is
not possible."
Because he was daring, the general went on, he had sought in-
formation on the two ranches among people in competent positions.
One such person, he said, was a former governor of West Java.25
25. Although Jasin did not name the former governor, he was known
to be referring to Lt. Gen. Solichin, governor of West Java from166
This man had stated that Suharto had called him in and said that he
wanted a place to relax, as it was always busy in the city. In
Jasin’s opinion, the presidential palace at Bogor was large enough for
Suharto’s recreational purposes. But, he added, the governor had
admitted that he provided Suharto with land certificates for 720
hectares where former land rights had expired—almost enough on
Java, Jasin noted, for an entire village.
Jasin, who served as secretary-general of the Department of
Public Works in 1973-74, added that a former minister of public works
had told him that the construction of roads and irrigation works on
the property had been carried out, at Suharto's request, by the Pub-
lic Works Department.26 An admiral had told him that the cattle on
the property had been brought from Australia on navy ships: "Now
comes the big question. How is it that Mr. Sigit Suharto, as a pri-
vate citizen, is able to issue orders to the following: a governor a
minister, and the navy? The answer, according to very simple logic,
is that it is impossible.1,27
What was surprising, said Jasin, was that all this could be
done. "And here we come to the core of the hypocrisy in the na-
tional leadership of Suharto." There was constant talk about having
to take action against the commercialization of office, yet this did not
apply to Suharto himself and the talk of him acting as an honorary
consultant was "an absolute lie." In the statement, Jasin said he
clearly remembered the words of General Darjatmo, the speaker of the
MPR and the Parliament, when he, Jasin, had met him in his office on
September 10,	1979. "How can a battalion commander take action
against his subordinates," Darjatmo had asked, "if he himself is dis-
honest?" According to Jasin, all true nationalists were now asking
who was the battalion commander of the state of Indonesia. The In-
donesian people admired and valued development policies being imple-
1970-76. According to Murdani, Solichin had been asked about this
matter by the president and had replied that he had not spoken to
Jasin for seven years. Interview with Lt. Gen. Benny Murdani, July
3, 1980. (It was possible, of course, that Solichin had told Jasin of
this prior to 1973.)
26.	Although Jasin was equally unforthcoming about the identity of
the former minister of public works, this was known to be Sutami,
who held this position from 1965 to 1978. In the view of senior
officers of the ruling group, it had been quite wrong of Jasin to in-
volve the former minister in this fashion. "Sutami is dead now," one
officer said. "In this country it is very unacceptable to use someone
who is dead." This officer, who had received the first of the Jasin
interrogation reports the previous day, claimed that Jasin had said:
"Saya disuruh Dharsono." ("I was ordered/commanded by Dhar-
sono.") Confidential communication July 1980. "If there is evidence,
we will charge him [Jasin]," this officer said. "It's libel."
27.	Jasin statement.167
merited by the New Order government led by Suharto. "But how can
we, the Indonesian people, including ABRI, tolerate or permit or
accept the hypocrisy and corruption of the New Order led by Presi-
dent Suharto?"28
Jasin, as we shall see, had got off a few sighting shots against
Suharto in earlier letters to Jusuf and other senior officers. But his
public broadside in Parliament made unprecedented use of vitriol.
Many senior military leaders had been prepared to listen to the sort
of statements that had been made in the Petition of Fifty, even if that
too had sorely angered the president. But many were appalled by
the vituperation of the Jasin attack, which seemed to them out of
keeping with the Javanese character. Not even the students who had
attacked the president in 1977 over his US$1 million mausoleum had
used such bitter language. "We don’t mind about the others," one
senior general said at the time, "but we really feel that Jasin did not
behave in the correct way. ... We [staff officers] know all about
Tapos. But it's nothing. The president is a farm boy. He likes to
get his hands in the dirt. He didn't take the land, [he] just leased
it for twenty-five years. It's pretty useless hill land anyway. And
if [Australian Prime Minister] Malcolm Fraser sends him a bull he
crossbreeds it and sends the cattle around to other areas."29 Two
weeks later, this officer added: "A lot of people know how Pak h’arto
got it. He didn't spend a single penny on it."30
In the wake of these developments the shutters suddenly came
down. Indonesian editors were instructed not to mention the petition
or the Jasin document, and there were reports that the government
was planning to close down the local office of Radio Australia which
had carried the items in both its English and Indonesian news bulle-
tins.31
On June 3, Genera, Yoga Sugama and Admiral Sudomo summoned
the chief editors of the nation's leading newspapers and magazines to
explain and justify the government's actions. However, their com-
ments only seemed to add fuel to the fire. The petition, Yoga an-
nounced, had been a "constitutional coup d'etat" and the key signato-
ries were now under constant surveillance.32 Moreover, the govern-
28.	Ibid.
29.	Comments made by a senior Indonesian genera, in a conversation
with Warwick Beutler, June 14, 1980. Communication with Beutler,
June 15, 1980.
30.	Confidential communication, July 1980.
31.	The Radio Australia correspondent, Warwick Beutler, was unable
to renew his visa and left the country in mid-1980. His virtual ex-
pulsion was the culmination of a number of events.
32.	Information provided by a senior Indonesian journalist, June 4,
1980. Yoga made the point "about ten times" that Jusuf was fully be-
hind the government. "You should not just think it is [the two of]168
ment had evidence of a plot to assassinate sixty-seven people, start-
ing with Suharto. To back up this claim, Yoga produced a document
which purported to be the work of the retired generals from the ex-
Fosko group.
In the twenty-eight-page document, which made illegal use of
the army crest on its front page, it was said that Fosko had begun to
take steps to change the national leadership because this could not
wait until 1982. The minister of defense, it said, should urge the
president to hand over the reins of government to a presidium led by
the minister of defense and consisting of prominent national figures of
his choosing. On the next page, the document mentioned Jusuf by
name. There was no date when the presidium should take over and
no indication of the size of the presidium. However, Sudomo is said
to have mentioned August 17, Indonesia’s National Day, as the date
the alleged plotters had in mind, and to have spoken of a council of
six.
The document was a patent forgery—as some government
leaders, crestfallen and embarrassed, later privately admitted—and it
is hard to believe that Yoga ever took it very seriously. Certainly
the editors did not. At the briefing, the talk of a constitutional
coup—which smacked of a contradiction in terms—was met with scorn
and derision. The suggestion that men of the stature of Nasution,
Hugeng, and Natsir were somehow connected with a plot to assassi-
nate government leaders was dismissed as an absurdity. Nasution,
deeply offended by the government's tactics, described the claims as
fitnah (defamation).
At the funeral of General Yani [after the coup attempt in
1965] I said the Communists had committed fitnah against
us in the military leadership, by claiming that we had
been planning to overthrow the government. I said that
fitnah is worse than murder. Now they [the government]
are doing the same, exactly the same. They are claiming
that those of us who signed the Petition of Fifty are plot-
ting to assassinate the leaders and take over the govern-
ment. So history is repeating itself. The PKI said that
Yani and I and the others were preparing to take over
from Sukarno. And that was never the case. And now
it is the same. The government is saying that maybe we
are planning to murder the president. And not even the
PKI said that we intended to murder Sukarno. They [the
government] are murdering us when they spread these
slanders.33
us. If I want to arrest these [fifty] people tomorrow and send them
to Buru I can have a Hercules [from the Air Force] just like that."
33. Interview with General Nasution.169
While the press briefing seemed an amazing case of overreac-
tion, an attempt by senior officers to smooth the ruffled feathers of
those on high, the government did show that it had at least learned
some lessons from earlier experiences in the field. At the briefing,
Yoga announced that there would be no arrests of the government's
critics, because arrests would only give the petitioners the martyrdom
they sought. However, the government would press ahead with its
plans to strike back in other ways at those who had spoken out.
They would, he said, be isolated; their expiring work permits and
business licenses would not be renewed; their credit lines to state
banks would be cut off; their requests for exit permits would not be
approved; and they would not be permitted to participate in govern-
ment tenders.
Such actions, which a former minister of mines, Slamet
Bratanata, described as "an attempt to strangle people to death by
economic means,"3U were typical of the Suharto government and had a
double aim. On the one hand they would punish those who had
stepped out of line. On the other, they would serve as a warning to
anyone else who might seek to challenge those in authority. Often
these "punishments" were of a particularly spiteful nature, as in the
case with General Hugeng, the former chief of police. A modest and
unassuming officer with a reputation for probity and idealism, Hugeng
had been forced to resign in 1971 after tracking down an import
racket that led to Madame Suharto.35 But Hugeng also had another
string to his bow; an accomplished entertainer, he had been perform-
ing Hawaiian songs on Indonesia's state-owned television network for
twelve years. Immediately after he added his name to the petition,
Ali Murtopo, now minister for information, announced that Hugeng's
popular TV show was to be axed on the grounds that Hawaiian music
"does not reflect the national culture"—a ban which did not extend to
such programs as Ellery Queen and The Flintstones. At the subse-
quent briefing for editors, Sudomo chimed in with some gratuitous
remarks about the former police chief. "Don't look on Hugeng as an
innocent guitar player or Hawaiian singer," he said. "We must not
exclude the possibility that he will one day sing a revolutionary song
and incite people to riot."36
The outcry over Suharto's remarks in March and April had be-
come pervaded by a general sense of unreality, and at the briefing
for Indonesian editors it began to lurch decisively towards total con-
34.	Interview with Slamet Bratanata.
35.	Details of the first lady's alleged involvement in the multimillion
dollar smuggling racket were aired in court during the trial of Sawito
Kartowibowo late in 1977. See David Jenkins, "Trial touches raw
nerves," FEER, January 13, 1978. Hugeng was dismissed four days
after he revealed details of the racket. See Crouch, Army and Poli-
tics in Indonesia, p. 292, n.
36.	Confidential communication, June 5, 1980.170
fusion and absurdity. Within Indonesia, the talk of plots and assas-
sination bids, of illegal documents and illegal transfer of power, had
been recognized for what it was—a rather hamfisted and theatrical
way of putting the damper on further criticism. But then foreign
news organizations heard of the briefing and began taking some of
the more bizarre and ill-considered remarks at face value. Foreign
bankers began making worried telephone calls. Western embassies
started to fret about a downturn in foreign investment. This
roller-coaster descent into absurdity—a consequence, it is true, of
the overreaction, if not the grotesque ineptitude, of some high
officials—only served to obscure the more important aspects of the
debate stirred up by Suharto’s speeches.
One interesting development was that, as the protest wave
gathered momentum, the critics had become increasingly daring and
outspoken, more inclined to thumb their noses at government leaders.
At a seminar to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Atma Jaya
Catholic University in Jakarta several days before the security brief-
ing to editors, Ali Sadikin had spoken out against the growing tight-
ness of the political system—and heaped scorn on Ali Murtopo for dis-
sembling about the ban on Hugeng’s Hawaiian music. I^iis remarks,
delivered in an easy, off-the-cuff manner, had produced an extraor-
dinary response, the hall ringing with applause and acclamation.
Having taken a swipe at the pettiness of the government’s ac-
tions, Sadikin continued, in a more statesmanlike manner, with an
outline of what he saw as the fundamental questions that were being
asked in Indonesia. The struggle to establish democracy, he said,
would be a long one; it was not just a matter of general elections in
1982 or 1987. And it was a struggle that would have to be waged by
the younger generation. "Never mind the generation of 1945 [the in-
dependence fighters]," said Sadikin. "They are all brengsek [rot-
ten], I know because I'm one of them." Later, turning to the dwi-
fungsi of the military and the question of a gradual increase in ci-
vilian responsibility, the former Jakarta governor said: "We know who
screwed up the political parties."37 That tart observation was also
met with resounding applause.
The mood of men like Jasin and Sadikin could be summed up in
the word nekad—they were obstinate, even reckless in their new
mood of defiance, ready in some cases to risk almost everything in
their struggle against the government. Until now, the regime had
tended to feel that there was little to fear from disaffected generals.
It had generally been assumed in Jakarta that these people could be
kept in line by calls for solidarity or, if that failed, by the with-
drawal of the government patronage on which so many of them de-
pended. "Most of these people," one member of the ruling group
said, "are just as corrupt as anyone else. We have a laundry list.
We can hit back if they want that."38 That might have been true.
37.	Ibid.
38.	Confidential communication.171
But if the wave of criticism persisted, many felt, laundry lists might
not be enough, as the government seemed to admit. No one believed
for a moment that a group of retired generals and ex-ministers were
about to bring down the New Order government. But, in the long
run, continuing criticism of this kind was likely further to erode
Suharto’s claim to legitimacy.
Shadows Behind the Screen
By mid-1980, the Petition of Fifty had become the central talk-
ing point of Indonesian politics. However, few people stopped to ask
who was behind it. The answer, as with so many ether protests at
this time, was that it was in large measure the work of retired
generals. The petition appears to have been inspired by Mokoginta’s
April 18 letter to Jusuf, in which the former Sumatra commander com-
mented on the president’s Pekanbaru speech. Although Mokoginta felt
there was a need for a more comprehensive statement after Suharto
had spoken again at Cijantung, he believed it would look foolish to
write another letter so soon after the first. Accordingly, he sug-
gested that Slamet Bratanata draft a document of concern and this,
after three drafting sessions, the last chaired by Daan Jahja, became
the petition.39 Given the involvement of the "ex-Fosko" generals, it
might appear surprising that none of the three members of the FKS
"daily board" (Dharsono, Sukendro, and Sudirman) appended their
names to the document. (Djatikusumo, a member of the original Fosko
presidium, had by this time dropped out of the group.)Q9 Why, it
might be asked, had members of the FKS leadership remained aloof
from a document that had been so much their own work when most
ordinary members of their group had signed? The answer, according
39.	Interview with Slamet Bratanata, March 4, 1982. In an interview
(November 7,	1981) Maj. Gen. Sukendro said of the Petisi 50:
"Memang buat disini" (at the FKS office). ("Indeed, it was prepared
here.") General Nasution confirms that the initiative for the petition
came from retired generals, particularly those in the FKS. (Inter-
view, June 23, 1980.) No one has linked Nasution with the prepara-
tion of the petition and he has stressed that he remained aloof from
the planning, leaving this to others.
40.	Djatikusumo's withdrawal from the Fosko grouping coincided with
his appointment as deputy chairman of the DPA (Supreme Advisory
Council). According to General Jasin, the reason was that
Djatikusumo had been provided with a generous salary and with vari-
ous "facilities." (Interview with Lt. Gen. Jasin, May 23, 1980.) Ac-
cording to Jusuf Wanandi, Jasin taunted Djatikusumo and said,
"You're too old to sign. You've lost your teeth." Djatikusumo is
said to have answered, "No, that's not the way to do it." (Interview
with Jusuf Wanandi, June 17, 1980.) According to Wanandi,
Djatikusumo had changed a lot in two years and was now "very pro
the old man [Suharto]."172
to some in the government, was that this was an indication of the es-
sential deviousness, if not cowardice, of these men. Dharsono and
Sukendro, it was alleged, were "too clever" to sign the petition.
Having helped set the wheels in motion, it was suggested, Dharsono
and Sukendro had withdrawn to safe ground to watch the ensuing me-
lee, safe from any government reprisals. This, it was true, provided
a convenient explanation for the government side and one which had
the advantage of impugning the character of two of its principal ad-
versaries. However, it would seem to ignore other considerations
that were apparently in the minds of these three men.
One reason why Dharsono, Sukendro, and Sudirman did not
sign the petition was that, as office bearers of the FKS, they wanted
to keep their lines of communication open to General Poniman. When
Fosko had been obliged to change its name in 1979, its leaders, anx-
ious to maintain the official link that Widodo had provided, had gone
to considerable lengths to comply with his ruling that they keep their
deliberations and suggestions private. In a document issued early in
1980, the FKS stressed that the army chief of staff was the only per-
son who received copies of their recommendations, although they said
they hoped that he would "process and evaluate" the results of their
labors and forward them to such people as the minister for defense
and the president.111 The document went on to stress that FKS had
been formed merely as a dopur sosial (social kitchen) and had no re-
lations with any other organization. In April 1980, shortly before the
petition was drawn up, Widodo had been replaced as chief of staff by
Poniman. The "Fosko" group was keen to retain the lines of commu-
nication which Widodo had, at some cost to himself, established and
maintained, particularly as Poniman seemed prepared to continue what
Widodo had begun.1*2 In a meeting with Brig. Gen. Slamet, the Fosko
liaison officer, 3 Poniman had said that he would "continue the policy
of Mr. Widodo."1*1* Accordingly, the FKS leaders were at some pains
to avoid taking any action which, like the participation of Fosko in
the 1979 National Awakening Day celebrations, might jeopardize those
links. If the three FKS daily board members appended their names to
the petition, it was feared, it would drag Fosko into a skirmish that
might well threaten its last remaining links with the army leadership.
Another reason was that Sudirman and Dharsono had already
sent their own protest letter to Poniman, using language that was
considerably stronger than that in the petition. "I didn't sign,"
41.	Fosko Brosur 1980.
42.	Fosko, according to Slamet Bratanata, was "lying low" at the
time of the petition in order to preserve these links. Interview,
1980. Jasin, confirming this, said, "We [would] like to maintain the
umbrella." Interview, May 23, 1980.
43.	The former liaison officer, Maj. Gen. Sugih Arto, had dropped
out of the group by this stage.
44.	Interview with Jasin, May 23, 1980.173
Sukendro noted, "because the language in the letter to the Kasad was
stronger: "We considered that we had sent a stronger letter already
and that it was not necessary to sign. Besides, the petition is ex-
ternal while our letter is internal."1*^
45. Interview with Maj. Gen. Sukendro, November 7, 1981.CHAPTER EIGHT
DISENCHANTMENT AND RETRIBUTION
Have you seen [Jasin's] book? It’s crazy!
— Lt. Gen. Benny Murdani, 19791
Lt. Gen. Mohammad Jasin, who was to prove the most prickly of
all the retired generals, was a man who had come to judge contempo-
rary Indonesia by the strict standards of his own upbringing and
who, having found it wanting, was resolved to see it corrected at all
costs. There was in his make-up a strong puritanical streak, and
this, combined with a rather doctrinaire and inflexible nature, led him
to take actions which he saw as correct and necessary and berani
(brave, daring) and which others, particularly those of the contempo-
rary elite, saw as reckless, un-Javanese and, in the final analysis,
unforgivable. Jasin, in their view, had acted in a way which of-
fended the Javanese sense of propriety.
Some of the initial motivation for the Jasin crusade may well
have stemmed, as his critics suggested, from events of a more partic-
ular and personal nature. But in the end it was his sense of pro-
bity, the outrage he felt at things he saw as morally reprehensible,
that drove him on.2 He became in the end a man obsessed with the
rightness of his cause. And if he lost the support of many along the
way—describing the president as a hypocrite was hardly the stuff of
everyday Javanese politics—then there were others, including a num-
ber of prominent figures in the army, who stood by him and gave
their moral support to what he had done.
Jasin was born in Aceh on July 22, 1921 , the eldest son of a
harbor technician from East Java and his Jakarta-born wife.3 He re-
ceived his entire education in Taman Siswa schools, and his character
appears to have been shaped to a quite extraordinary extent by the
1.	Interview with Lt. Gen. Benny Murdani, August 14, 1979.
2.	"I think at that time [the early 1970s] you can say the motivation
was personal," General Nasution said in an interview (July 7, 1980).
"At the beginning it was personal motivation. But that is now a long
time ago."
3.	The material in this section is based on an interview with Lt.
Gen. Jasin on May 23, 1980 and on interviews with his former col-
leagues.
174175
values inculcated in these institutions. The Taman Siswa schools had
been established by Ki Hadjar Dewantoro (Suwardi Surianingrat), an
educational reformist who, concerned that Western education was un-
dermining Indonesia's sense of its own identity, had fashioned a cur-
riculum that was a blend of Montessori's ideas and traditional
Javanese culture. Students were imbued with a strong sense of na-
tional and personal identity in surroundings that called for rigid
self-discipline.
Jasin, after spending the first thirteen years of his life in
Aceh, had attended a "middle school" in Medan in the early 1930s,
before going on to junior high school in Yogyakarta. His life there
was spartan in the extreme. After a brief period as a teacher, Jasin
joined the Peta, the Japanese-sponsored self-defense forces, before
going on, like so many others, to take part in the revolutionary
struggle against the Dutch. In 1960, after a period as an instructor
at SSKAD (Staff and Command School) in Bandung, he was sent to
Aceh as military commander by Nasution with the task of negotiating
an end to the rebellion there. He carried out the job successfully,
thanks in part to the help of some former colleagues of Daud
Beureueh, the so-called "strong man of Aceh," who headed the armed
rebellion against the Indonesian government from 1953 to 1962. Jasin
was given the job, because he knew Aceh and the Acehnese but was
still a man of the center.** He was later posted to Moscow as military
attach^.
In 1965, after Jasin had been in Moscow a year, Suharto called
him back to Jakarta and said he would like him to remain in the So-
viet Union for another year. In 1966, Suharto recalled Jasin for
good, giving him a second star and one of the plum jobs in the Indo-
nesian military hierarchy—command of Kodam VIII Brawijaya (East
Java). East Java, with 25 million people, and Suharto's home prov-
ince of Central Java, together accounted for more than 40 percent of
Indonesia' population, and both were critical areas in the tense days
following the 1965 coup attempt. After Jasin replaced Sumitro in East
Java in early 1967, he distinguished himself by the very tough mea-
sures he took against Sukarnoist remnants in the Brawijaya itself, the
KKO (Marines), the police, and the PNI.4 5 When in that same year
remnants of the outlawed PKI were said to be preparing a comeback
at South Blitar, according to Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono, at that time
head of Bakin, Jasin at first refused to believe there was any such
danger:6
4.	I am indebted to Prof. Ben Anderson and General Nasution for
making this point.
5.	See Crouch, Indonesian Army in Politics, pp. 498-500 and pp.
561-62.
6.	Interview with Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono, July 21, 1981.176
It is interesting that at the time we had the conclusion
that [the PKI would resurface in East Java] and maybe in
these particular places. We went to the Panglima
Brawijaya, at that time General Jasin, and General Jasin
told me that ”l am the commander and there is nothing
happening in East Java." It was very hard for us to
convince him that some months from then it could happen
like this and maybe in these places." He said to us,
"But that is nonsense. I am the commander here and I
see nothing here." Later he had to admit that I was
right.7
Once he accepted that a danger did exist from an underground
PKI, Jasin took all necessary steps to suppress it. Operation
Trisula, launched against "Communist remnants" in mid-1968, was
noted for its ferocity. Jasin was equally forceful in putting down
anti-Chinese riots in Surabaya in 1968.
When, in 1980, Jasin forwarded his controversial letter to the
DPR, he would claim that one of his objectives "was to change the
system, change the system of democracy." As commander of the
Brawijaya, however, Jasin gave little indication that he saw his job as
upholding the sanctity of the democratic process. In the late 1960s,
he clamped down on the PNI and NU and dragooned villagers into
Golkar with the same sort of zeal he had shown in combatting Commu-
nists and rioters. He also worked actively to ensure that military
authority was established at all levels in East Java. As General
Sumitro was wont to observe: "In the late 1960s the Panglima were al-
ways happy if they knew that all the kepala desa [village heads.] were
military men. . . . People can lie at the moment. But I’m within the
process and I know exactly that the Panglima in West Java, even
Jasin [in East Java] at that time, they are both very happy if all the
kepala desa there are ex-soldiers. And the camat too. They were all
soldiers too."8
Like other retired generals whose recommendations were often at
variance with their actions while in uniform, Jasin may well have seen
things from a different perspective in his retirement. But his
about-face on the value of free expression provided ammunition to
7.	Ibid.
8.	Interview with General Sumitro, December 12, 1981. Crouch has
argued (personal communication) that Jasin's actions were mainly di-
rected against the PNI, not so much the NU, and that dragooning
people into Golkar only really took place after Jasin had left East
Java. Sumitro and Nasution are among those who take a different
view. Nasution says that prominent figures in both the PNI and the
NU had told him at the time that they had been hit by the actions
taken by Jasin. Written communication, March 4, 1983. Jasin moved
to Jakarta in January 1970, eighteen months before the general elec-
tions on July 3, 1971.177
those around Suharto who looked on Jasin with anger and contempt,
and who saw him as being as munafik (hypocritical) as almost anyone
else. In any event, it seems clear that concern about political re-
pression was not in the forefront of his thinking in the late 1960s.
Jasin's first serious doubts about Suharto stemmed, in fact, from
three "watershed experiences" in the early 1970s.
Having succeeded in his assignment in East Java, Jasin was
again rewarded by Suharto; in 1970 he was promoted to lieutenant
general and made deputy chief of staff of the army. It was while
serving in this position in Jakarta that Jasin began to entertain his
first doubts about the Suharto government. During the 1971 election
campaign, he says, the president called him in to his office and of-
fered him five-ton trucks for use in connection with the campaign.9
Jasin says he refused to accept vehicles of this size, objecting that
rural roads were not adequate for five-ton trucks in many parts of
the country. He asked instead for 2 1/2 ton trucks. Suharto, whose
aides reportedly had made arrangements with a large Japanese motor
company for delivery of the larger vehicles, is said to have re-
sponded, "If you don't like five-ton trucks you can forget about hav-
ing any transportation. "10 In the event, Jasin was obliged to accept
the larger vehicles. This incident, and others of a similar nature,
offended Jasin's sense of propriety, and his opposition grew as he
came to the conclusion that the government was unaware of, or indif-
ferent to, the sort of moral values that had figured so prominently in
his own life. This sense of disaffection was accelerated by two other
developments, one of which Jasin saw as an affront to his family and
another which struck at his own self-esteem.
The first incident involved Maj. Gen. Bustanil Arifin. Arifin,
who was later to achieve considerable success as head of Bulog, the
national logistics office, was in almost every respect the direct anti-
thesis of Jasin. A freewheeling military entrepreneur who enjoyed
particularly close relations with the first family, he stood for almost
al, the things that Jasin found distasteful. Jasin was a fighting gen-
eral, Bustanil Arifin a palace general and fix-it man. Jasin was
slightly built, wiry, and somewhat severe, an implacable moralist with
a rather melancholy disposition. Arifin was rotund, jolly, and
self-indulgent; a man who enjoyed the good things of life. If Jasin
was known as a man of abstemious ways, then Bustanil Arifin was
known for his high living. If Jasin was known for his probity and
parsimony, Bustanil was seen as an indefatigably wheeler-dealer, a
man, the local press implied, who had been associated with some
questionable business dealings and had done very handsomely out of
them. If Jasin had a reputation as a rather straight-laced figure,
then Bustanil enjoyed a certain notoriety as a ladies' man. In 1973,
Bustanil's inclinations in this direction were to bring the two generals
into collision. At the airport to bid farewell to his 22-year-old
9.	Interview with Jasin, May 23, 1980.
10.	Ibid.178
daughter as she set off, on her first trip abroad, to study English in
London, Jasin noticed that Bustanil Arifin was taking the same flight.
He asked him, as one officer to another, to keep an eye on the girl.
When Jasin's daughter arrived in London, she wrote to her father
that Arifin had been kurang ajar (literally, "less than educated") on
the flight.11 Infuriated, Jasin asked Suharto to discipline Arifin.
Nothing was done, however, apparently because Arifin enjoyed such
close relations with the first family and was a particular favorite of
Madame Tien Suharto. (Arifin’s wife was related to Madame Suharto.)
When Jasin tried once more to raise the matter with Suharto, the
president refused to receive him.12 Still smouldering over the affair,
Jasin summoned Arifin to his home in Kebayoran Baru and, according
to his account, struck him across the face and punched him. Arifin,
being only a one-star officer did not, it seems, seek to defend him-
self. (According to the account of one of the senior generals in the
Suharto group, Jasin did not strike Arifin himself but ordered a
younger officer to do it for him. In the view of this officer, Arifin
may have had something of the sort coming to him. But, it is ar-
gued, Jasin behaved improperly in not doing the job himself. Jasin
insists that he was the one who dealt the rebuke to Arifin.)13
Later that year, when General Umar Wirahadikusumah stood
down as chief of staff, Jasin was confident that he, as deputy chief
of staff, would move up to this highly prestigious position, thus be-
coming the first officer from the Brawijaya to hold that post.11* He
was bitterly disappointed when he was passed over and Suharto ap-
pointed in his stead General Surono Reksodimedjo, a former com-
11.	Interview with senior military officer, July 3, 1980. As this of-
ficer noted, kurang ajar could mean anything. "He may have said
something that wasn't right or tried to kiss her. But you can't do
much more with 100 people watching." On the other hand, if Arifin
had merely tried to kiss the girl, it is unlikely that Jasin would have
wanted to complain to the palace in person.
12.	Interview with Jasin, May 23, 1980.
13.	Jasin, according to a senior officer, may have struck Bustanil
once or twice but had had a junior officer punch him. That, in this
officer's opinion, "was not right."
14.	The officers who have filled the position of army chief of staff
have all come from either the Siliwangi or the Diponegoro. No one
has been able to offer a particularly plausible explanation for this,
although Jasin claims that it is because East Javanese are too
strong-willed. (Interview, May 13, 1980.) In fact, it may simply
have been an accident of history. Given that Sumitro rose to become
deputy commander of the armed forces and commander of Kopkamtib,
it can hardly be argued that East Javanese have been excluded from
the upper reaches of the army command system. In view of the
greatly circumscribed power of the army chief of staff, there may no
longer be any significance in having a Kasad from the Brawijaya.179
mander of Military Region VII (Diponegoro). Jasin was moved out of
the army, becoming secretary general of the Department of Public
Works, a position he held until he resigned and went into private
business in 1974 following a post-Malari decree, more honored in the
breach than in the observance, that the relatives of officials must not
be involved in business. (Jasin’s wife was so involved.) He was at
this time an embittered man. He nursed a grudge against Suharto for
ignoring his repeated complaints about Bustanil Arifin and he had
been taken aback by the appointment of Surono. And in the Depart-
ment of Public Works he had been presented with further evidence of
the way in which Suharto did business.
Jasin’s feelings of bitterness over the way he had been treated
went hand in hand with a growing disillusionment about the extent of
practices which, to his comparatively puritanical nature, were beyond
the bounds of all propriety. This, in a man of such moral rectitude,
was to prove an explosive mix. His sense of being slighted seems to
have provided at least some of the motivation for what was to develop
into a singular one-man campaign against corruption and delinquency
in general and the person of Suharto in particular.
After his retirement, Jasin began to turn his attention, almost
obsessively, to the question of ’’correcting” the system. And his
conviction in the rightness of his cause and his determination to pur-
sue it to its logical limits strengthened, as one senior official after
another sought to persuade him that corruption was not all that seri-
ous in Indonesia and that the issue had been blown out of all propor-
tion. To Jasin, it became increasingly obvious that the government
was not sincere about corruption, and he saw each new profession of
concern as evidence of a hypocrisy that extended through all layers
of the government. He became an inveterate writer of letters and
memos. He chided ministers when they suggested that corruption was
not a problem and made the point that so-called "leakages” were de-
priving the state of vast amounts of money.
The development of Jasin’s thinking and his growing disen-
chantment with Suharto were plainly visible in the letters he wrote to
prominent officials in the years that followed his retirement. On June
28, 1974, he forwarded a strongly worded ten-page letter to Suharto
offering his thoughts about the problem of implementing a 1974 decree
dealing with "Restrictions on the Activity of Government Servants in
Private Business."15 The tone was respectful but direct. Jasin
wrote that he was offering his conclusions and suggestions with sin-
cerity and purity, based merely on a realistic attitude and without
political motivation. His view at this time, he said in a subsequent
interview,16 was that the government was not at all serious in its
15.	The text of this letter is to be found in M. Jasin, Apakah Perlu
Pemerintah Dikoreksi?: Persembahan Untuk Generasi Muda (Jakarta:
n.p., 1979), pp. 35-44.
16.	Interview, May 23, 1980.180
purported determination to prevent civil servants from taking outside
jobs. The decree banning such activity, he felt, was merely ’’camou-
flage'’ for the government in the wake of the Malari Affaii—an attempt
to persuade the students that the government was clean. In Jasin's
view, it was essential that the government take the decree seriously
and implement it fully.
Several years later, the minister of home affairs, Lt. Gen. Amir
Machmud, was reported to have said in Bandung that it was "ru-
mored" that the government apparatus was very involved in corrup-
tion; this, the minister had replied was not true at all.17 Jasin was
appalled. He wrote immediately to Amir Machmud, saying that cor-
ruption was not merely something that was rumored but that the indi-
cations of it were plainly visible. It was present at every echelon,
from the bottom to the top.18
On January 2,	1979, it was reported that the minister of
health, Dr. Suwardjono Surjaningrat, had said that if small groups of
people were claiming that the development program had been a fail-
ure, such statements were without foundation and untrue.19 During
Repelita I (the first five-year plan) expenditure in the state budget
had been Rp 1 trillion. But in Repelita II it had been Rp 4 trillion
and in Repelita III Rp. 6 trillion. Once again, Jasin felt compelled to
respond. In a letter dated January 4, he reminded the minister that
the former minister for research. Dr. Sumitro, and the chairman of
the National Audit Board, General Umar Wirahadikusumah, had esti-
mated that waste and corruption accounted for 30-40 percent of the
state budget. If one took 35 percent of Rp 5 trillion (Pelita I and II)
it came to Rp 1.75 trillion, or more than the total of Repelita I. This
was money which had produced no development.20
Jasin published these and other letters in a "white book" en-
titled Apakah Perlu Pemerintah Dikoreksi?: Persembahan (Jntuk
Cenerasi Muda." ("Does the Government Need Correcting?: Dedicated
to the Young Generation.") In the foreword, he explained how the
letters had come to be written and the response, if any, they had
evoked. He urged people to be berani in calling on the government
to make corrections, and added an extra sting to some of the obser-
vations he had made in the original letters. Thus, Amir Machmud
was now said to have been sangat munafik (extremely hypocritical) in
17.	A report of Amir Machmud’s comments, as published in Sinar
Harapan on February 23, 1977, is included in Apakah Perlu, p. 28.
18.	Jasin letter to Amir Machmud, February 24,	1977. Apakah
Perlu, pp. 24-27.
19.	The Antara report of these comments, which appeared on Janu-
ary 2, 1979, is included in Apakah Perlu, p. 13.
20.	Jasin letter to Suwardjono Surjaningrat, January 4, 1979, pub-
lished in Apakah Perlu, pp. 11-12.181
saying that corruption was only something talked about by rumor-
mongers.21
Meanwhile, Jasin continued with his letter-writing campaign.
On September 7, 1979, he sent a letter to General Darjatmo, chairman
of the MPR/DPR, taking issue with a comment he had made and re-
questing an appointment with him.22 Darjatmo received Jasin at his
office on September 10. Three days later, Jasin wrote thanking the
MPR/DPR chairman and again calling for reform of the system.23 By
now, his criticisms were getting closer and closer to the president.
In his letter of September 13 he recalled General Darjatmo's question:
"How can a battalion commander take action against his subordinates
if he himself is dishonest?” In the same letter, he employed the word
kemunafikan (hypocrisy), typed in capital letters, to describe the na-
ture of the national leadership.
In October, Jasin summarized his views in a "Contribution of
Thoughts” submitted to the "Fosko Purna Yudha ABRI.”2k This doc-
ument took more than a veiled swipe at the behavior of Suharto and
his family.
In 1978, Jasin had been a founding member of Fosko TNI-AD
and had been appointed to the presidium of that body. Now, starting
with his visit to Darjatmo, he began calling on prominent army offi-
cers in the government to express personally his concern about the
need for correction in the government. (Under the rules of Fosko
TNI-AD, a member was permitted to take any individual action he
deemed fitting so long as he reported on his actions to the Fosko
board.) Jasin had little difficulty in setting up his initial meetings.
As a former commander of the Brawijaya and deputy chief of staff, he
had close personal links with many of those in the upper echelons of
the government and, initially at least, his former colleagues were
ready to give him the sort of respectful hearing that was due an old
associate.
In October, Jasin called on the army chief of staff, General
Widodo. The two men had never had much opportunity to become
close friends—Jasin, who was five years older, had been commander
of the Brawijaya at a time when Widodo was chief of staff of the
Diponegoro, under Surono. But Widodo, who had already been criti-
cized for his closeness to the Fosko generals, was ready to listen to
what the former deputy chief of staff had to say. The attorney gen-
21.	See Kata Pengantar, Apakah Perlu , p. 8.
22.	Jasin letter to Gen. Darjatmo, September 7, 1979. Copy made
available by General Jasin.
23.	Jasin letter to Darjatmo, September 13, 1979. Copy made avail-
able by General Jasin.
24.	See Jasin, "Sumbangan Pikiran Dalam Rangka Mengumpulkan
Data2 (kapita selecta) unt: Fosko Purna Yudha ABRI," October 29,
1979. Copy made available by General Jasin.182
eral, Lt. Gen. Ali Said, was also prepared to listen. Ali Said had
been Jasin's assistant V (territorial) in East Java, and when Jasin
called on him in January 1980 he found it easy to ’’talk to him
frankly."25 During the meeting, Jasin says, he told Ali Said he no
longer had any respect or trust in Suharto. As a loyal member of
the Suharto group, the attorney general may have felt a little uncom-
fortable to hear his former commanding officer speak in this manner
of the president. However, it would have been impolite and improper
for him to rebuke his "bapak," and he seems to have settled on the
course of saying as little as possible. "I have no reaction, Bapak
Jasin," Ali Said supposedly replied at the end of Jasin’s statement.
"You were my commanding officer before. I know about your charac-
ter."26
Jasin also considered himself to be close to Jusuf—while still a
colonel, Jasin had been panglima Aceh when Colonel Jusuf was
panglima South Sulawesi and both had been favorites of Sukarno—and
on October 27, 1979, he had written to the defense minister request-
ing an appointment to see him. His letter, however, had contained a
blistering attack on Suharto, and Jusuf, perhaps not surprisingly,
had failed to respond. Now, on February 27, 1980, he wrote again to
Jusuf, summarizing his views "in a short and clear fashion": "I no
longer believe in or trust President Suharto because the national
leadership at every level is munafik and I have proof of this hypoc-
risy both in the economic and in the political sectors."27
By now, Jasin was on a collision course with the president,
carried along by his conviction that something was fundamentally
wrong with the national leadership. It only remained for him to take
one more step—sending his May 9 letter to the DPR—for his disaffec-
tion to become a national issue.
Afterwards, when the Jasin affair had become a cause celfebre,
senior officers in Suharto’s circle were to imply that the former
deputy chief of staff had somehow gone "off the rails." (In not un-
typical fashion, the arguments of the ruling military group were to be
given their most fulsome expression by civilians closely associated
with those in power; often, they tended to adopt an angry and pa-
tronizing attitude towards Jasin that went beyond that of the gen-
eral’s military colleagues.) However, a number of prominent
officers—including at least two retired four-star generals—were pre-
pared to stand by Jasin. Nasution gave his moral support—and his
endorsement—to the actions Jasin had taken: ’’. . . strategically, he
is right, I think. You have to argue and he uses this argument.
Tactically, he may be said to be too hasty. But I am not against
this. I have explained to people that in an army you have commando
25.	Interview with Lt. Gen. Jasin, May 23, 1980.
26.	Ibid.
27.	Jasin letter to General Jusuf, February 27, 1980. Copy made
available by General Jasin.183
units as well as the infantry. You cannot have only infantry, you
need also commandos. But not everybody must be a commando."28
Sumitro, although he could not agree with Jasin's tactics, was
also sympathetic. "I know his weaknesses,” the former Kopkamtib
commander noted nine months after the Jasin document had been pre-
sented to the DPR. But "I still admire him."29
Cutting the Lifelines
Suharto is very good to his friends but revengeful to-
wards his enemies.
—Maj. Gen. Sukendro30
In his meeting with senior editors on June 3, 1980, General
Yoga Sugama had given assurances that the government would strike
back at those who had signed the petition. This it did without de-
lay. As we have seen, the Suharto government derived much of its
power from the skillful distribution of patronage, and this gave it
considerable room to "remind" those who failed to play by its rules
—particularly retired military men—that they could be squeezed out
and left to suffer. It was, said Lt. Gen. Benny Murdani in mid-
June, a denial of government privileges: "Normally when people re-
tire [from the army] they come to us and see what they can get in
the way of business. And normally people like this get first priority
on government contracts and tenders. They can make US$1-2 million
on commissions and that sort of thing and put it in the bank and sit
back for life. So what we have done in this case is tell them to go
to the bottom of the list."31
In fact, this was very much more than a mere denial of govern-
ment privileges. In the months that followed, the Suharto govern-
ment was to display a truly Nixonian facility for victimizing its politi-
cal "enemies," hounding them with a meanness of spirit that brought
little credit to either the president or those who enforced his will.
As threatened, the government took steps to "isolate" those associated
with the petition. Their expiring work permits and business licenses
were permitted to lapse. Their credit lines to state banks were cut,
and they were not permitted to participate in government tenders.
This had the effect of driving many retired officers out of business.
Ali Sadikin was obliged to relinquish his position with at least one
major company. Dharsono found it necessary to give up his post of
28.	Interview with General Nasution.
29.	Interview with General Sumitro, March 3, 1981.
30.	interview with Maj. Gen. Sukendro, November 7, 1981.
31.	Lt. Gen. Benny Murdani in a discussion with Warwick Beutler on
June 14, 1980. Communication with Beutler, June 15, 1980.184
chairman of P. T. Propelat, the Siliwangi holding company in West
Java.32 Sukendro, who had been president of the government-owned
holding company which managed thirty-nine of Central Java’s trading
and industrial companies, was obliged to step down from this position
on June 12, 1980.33 (Although neither Dharsono nor Sukendro had
signed the petition, they had been associated with its drafting.)
Jasin was obliged to give up his post as chief supervisor of three
companies he ran. And Slamet Bratanata, who ran a small business
as a consultant to foreign oil firms, saw his clients threatened, and
in a number of cases withdraw from their business dealings with him.
These measures, by their very nature, could only be used
against those who were dependent to some degree on government
largesse or permits. To penalize those who were not—and to under-
score official displeasure with those who were—the ruling group in-
troduced a comprehensive network of related "punishments."
One such punishment was a ruling that those associated with
the Petition of Fifty were not to travel abroad,314 a policy enforced
with a certain self-interested "flexibility." For example, former prime
minister Mohammad Natsir was banned from attending an Internationa,
Commission of Jurists seminar in Kuwait on "Islam and Human
Rights."35 But Nasution was permitted to accompany his wife to
Manila where Mrs. Nasution was to receive the Magsaysay Award for
her services to charity.36 The exception was made, apparently, to
avoid official embarrassment over the denial of a visa to the former
defense minister.
Under another ruling, the Foreign Ministry "recommended" that
signatories to the petition should be taken off the official invitation
lists of foreign embassies for the time being "to avoid any embarrass-
ment."37 A third ruling—and one that smacked of extreme petti-
ness—centered on official invitations to the National Day celebrations
at the Merdeka Palace each August 17. It was a custom in Indonesia
for former prime ministers, of whatever political coloration, to be
given a place of honor at these celebrations. Suharto, however, was
so angered by the actions of the petition's signatories that he ordered
aides to see to it that no further August 17 invitations be issued to
Natsir, Burhanuddin Harahap, or Sjafruddin Prawiranegara. It was,
thought Natsir, the action of a man with limited education and a lim-
32.	Interview with Lt. Gen. Dharsono.
33.	Interview with Maj. Gen. Sukendro.
34.	The travel ban was confirmed by the director genera, for immi-
gration, Maj. Gen. Nichlany. See Merdeka, Pelita and Harian AB,
July 3, 4, and 6, 1981.
35.	Interview with Mohammad Natsir, November 9, 1981.
36.	Interview with Genera, Nasution.
37.	See Reuters report in Straits Times, October 21 , 1980.185
itecf world view. In 1933-34, Natsir had conducted a polemic with
Sukarno about Islam. The exchanges had been sharp, but neither
man had said anything that would have been "painful” to the other.
There had been no personal animosity. This spirit had characterized
all their differences. When, twenty-five years later, Sukarno had
announced his konsepsi for Indonesia, Natsir had attacked it bitterly
in a newspaper article. "But on January 1 , 1958," said Natsir, "he
invited me to the palace and said not a word about Tmy criticism].
Everyone was aghast. Suharto is not able to do that. After the
Petisi 50 no one is invited to August 17 at the palace. ... We don't
exist any more. "38
Meanwhile, steps were also taken against academics who had
signed the petition. On June 9, 1980, the rector of the (Catholic)
Atma Jaya University in Jakarta was summoned by the inspector
general of the Department of Education and Culture and told to take
action against Chris Siner Key Timu, the forty-year-old head of the
student bureau at the university. The reason given was that Timu
had signed the petition. On July 22, the department threatened that
the status of the university and all the aid that had been given until
then would be "reviewed"- if Atma Jaya failed to take action against
Timu. On July 28, Timu felt obliged to tender his resignation.39
Timu had been a signatory of the petition, Education Minister Daud
Jusuf said, and he had a job that dealt with students, who were a
factor in the frequent occurrence of trouble on campus. "If he were
a sweeper," the minister said, "there would be no problem.,,i+0 At
the end of August, Dr. Judilherry Justam, was discharged as an as-
sistant at the University of Indonesia School of Medicine, owing to his
"redundancy." Judil, who had nominated himself for president in the
1978 MPR session, said it was beyond doubt that his dismissal was
due to the fact that he signed the petition. The same fate befell
Professor Dr. Kasman Singodimedjo and Dr. Anwar Haryono, both of
whom were lecturers at the Jakarta Sjarief Hidayat Institute of Islamic
Studies (IAIN).1+1
Many believed that Hugeng’s signature on the petition further
estranged him from the president and Madame Suharto. Hugeng had
agreed to give away his niece at her marriage (her father having
died), and when he did not in fact do so, it was said this was be-
cause of objections from the first family, who were acquainted with
the groom's family and were attending the wedding. The decision to
cancel Hugeng's "Hawaiian Seniors" television program, many be-
lieved, had been taken at least partly at the behest of Madame
Suharto. (The first lady, it was said, not only remembered Hugeng's
anticorruption campaign with disfavor but had for some time taken of-
38.	Mohammad Natsir interview, November 9, 1981.
39.	For details, see Tempo, September 13, 1980. USE.
40.	Merdeka, September 12, 1980.
41.	Ibid.186
fense at the sight of lightly clad "Hawaiian" girls appearing on her
television screen.)
Now, there were signs that the first lady was taking an active
interest in a campaign aimed at Nasution's wife. Mrs. Nasution was
the founder and chairman of the Coordinating and Supervising Body
for Social Welfare activities (Badan Pembina Koordinasi dan
Pengawasan Kegiatan Sosial, BPKKS), a body that enjoyed a high
reputation for its charitable work in Jakarta, and chairman of the In-
donesian National Council on Social Welfare (Dewan Nasional Indonesia
untuk Kesejahteraan Sosial, DNIKS), a national umbrella organization
of charitable bodies. However, the BPKKS had long been a thorn in
the side of Madame Suharto, who was founder and president of the
Our Hope Foundation (Yayasan Harapan Kita). The first lady wanted
to "acquire" the BPKKS, and Nasution's involvement with the petition
was evidently seen as providing this opportunity. Under plans drawn
up in Jakarta, the Department of Social Welfare began, early in 1981,
to summon all BPKKS branch secretaries and instruct them to set up
a new centra, organization, a move which was seen within the organ-
ization as a fairly heavy-handed attempt to depose Mrs. Nasution.
Under this plan, the government would sever the links between the
provincial branches and the foundation's headquarters in Jakarta and
would install Mrs. Nelly Adam Malik, wife of the vice president, as
chairman of a new foundation. To accomplish this task, the director
of a state bank was instructed to "freeze" a,, BPKKS funds. These
efforts did not allow for Mrs. Nasution's resourcefulness and the
strength of the informal ties she was able to cal, on. Adam Malik was
a relative of Nasution. On learning of the move to have Mrs. Malik
installed in her place Mrs. Nasution went to see the vice president,
emerging with an assurance that his wife would have nothing to do
with the new institution. The coordinating minister for people's wel-
fare, Genera, Surono, had at one time been Nasution's ADC, and
when Mrs. Nasution called on him to complain about the government's
moves she found him sympathetic. (Surono was described by one mil-
itary officer as "an army man, not a Golkar man.") At a wedding
ceremony, Mrs. Nasution approached the director of the government
bank which handled the BPKKS funds and said she was aware that he
was "trying to cut" her money. The manager confirmed that he had
instructions to do this but said that, while he had cut the money of
"the others," the BPKKS money was not in Mrs. Nasution's name and
could not be touched. Nasution himself was prevented from deliver-
ing a Lebaran sermon, an action which, he complained, was in breach
of both Article 29 of the Constitution and in violation of injunctions in
the Koran.1+2
Meanwhile, further action was being taken against Sukendro.
Not only was he obliged to step down as president of the holding
company of the Centra, Java government; he was also prevented from
completing his part-time academic studies. (The former army intelli-
42. Interview with Genera, Nasution.187
gence chief, who turned 57 in 1980, was preparing a dissertation in
business administration, looking at administrative reform within re-
gional corporations.) In July 1980, four months before his work
would have been finished, he received a letter saying that he would
not be permitted to complete his academic work.43
Clearly, the Suharto government was prepared to go to quite
extraordinary lengths to ensure that its ’’enemies" paid for their au-
dacity in criticizing the presidential statement at Pekanbaru. The
government banks and the immigration department took to keeping
"black lists" to ensure that no one from the group of fifty was able
to participate in a government tender, was granted a state bank loan,
or was allowed to leave the country. The government also took steps
to ensure that academic signatories were obliged to resign their
teaching posts, that men like Nasution were not permitted to speak at
mosques or write in the newspapers. It had also barred elderly na-
tionalist leaders from attending national day celebrations at the pal-
ace. "The idea," said Sukendro, "is that all your lifelines should be
cut."44 Nothing quite like this had ever happened before, not in
Dutch colonial times, not in Sukarno's time. It was, in short, an ex-
traordinary display of presidential sensitivity to criticism, and inevi-
tably, it produced an angry reaction. "We feel insulted at the way
they have cut us off from everything," Ali Sadikin complained.
"There were many in our group who fought for this country, before,
during and after the revolution. And they are treated like this. But
there are Chinese who did nothing, nothing, and they share in
everything.1,115
43.	Interview with Maj. Gen. Sukendro, November 7, 1981.
44.	Ibid.
45.	Interview with Lt. Cen. Ali Sadikin, June 19, 1980.CHAPTER NINE
THE HANKAM PAPER
We have agreed that the conclusion of this book should be
that the dwifungsi should be continued in principle but
that the implementation should be disempurnakan [per-
fected ].
Brig. Gen. Nugroho Notosusanto1
What had become abundantly clear by early 1980 was that criti-
cism of the existing system was coming not only from retired (and
therefore possible disgruntled) officers. Two of the most powerful
men in the military command system—the minister of defense/com-
mander of the armed forces and the army chief of staff—had made it
plain that they shared in this concern over the implementation of
ABRI’s dwifungsi. Others in senior positions were likewise con-
cerned. In the final analysis, however, this support amounted to
very little. It was a measure of the president's extraordinary control
over the system that he was able to silence these voices with his
March 27 speech in Pekanbaru.
Not long after that speech, the difference of opinion between
the "pragmatists" and those committed to a more "principled" approach
was to give birth to a third—and very different—paper on the
dwifungsi, one that was drawn up at the behest of the Hankam prag-
matists, if not the president himself. The "Hankam paper"2 would
serve as both a rebuttal of the key dwifungsi sections of the "Widodo
paper" and a justification for ABRI's extensive and continuing in-
volvement in nonmilitary activities. However, those commissioned to
prepare the Hankam paper, while paying due regard to the views of
their sponsors, were to argue strongly that the dwifungsi should be
implemented more correctly, and to suggest that the armed forces
should be far more selective in placing military personnel in non-
Hankam jobs.
1.	Interview with Brig. Gen. Nugroho Notosusanto, November 21,
1981.
2.	The full title of the "Hankam paper" was Pejuang dan Prajurit:
Konsepsi dan Implementasi Dwi Fungsi ABRI [Fighters and Soldiers:
The Concept and Implementation of ABRI's Dual Function]. The
paper was published by Sinar Harapan in book form in 1984.
188189
In the view of the authors of the Hankam paper, Widodo had
virtually come out in favor of the "Turkish model"—the notion that
the military should withdraw to the mountain top and only become in-
volved in times of national crisis.3 4 This was not entirely correct.
Although Widodo did favor a reduction in ABRI's nonmilitary role, it
was implicit in the Nasution-Abdulkadir Besar thinking which he and
the army staff endorsed that ABRI, whatever else it might give up,
would always be represented in the MPR. This would ensure that, at
the very least, the armed forces had a say in the formulation of the
Broad Outlines of State Policy (GBHN) and in the selection of the
president. On the other hand, the officers committed to a more prin-
cipled approach were advocating something akin to the Turkish model.
The officers believed it was necessary to establish a "national consen-
sus" among the various political groupings that, if a non-Golkar party
were to win the elections, the successful party should be allowed
—with one proviso—to take office. The proviso was that, should this
party deviate from the Pancasila and seek, for example, to establish a
Negara Islam, the ABRI would take steps to crush it.*1 This line of
thinking, dangerously liberal in the view of the ruling group, seemed
to run parallel to that of Jusuf. If Widodo had disturbed some key of-
ficers by his support to those who sought to undermine the existing
orthodoxies, then Jusuf seemed to those officers to be even more un-
realistic. Not only was he propagating the notion that ABRI should
be above all groups; he also seemed inclined to do away with the mili-
tary’s kekaryaan function, at least in its existing form. And the ap-
pointment of ABRI officers as karyawan was the cornerstone of mili-
tary control over the civilian sector.
In January 1980, Jusuf announced that he was calling back all
Akabri (Military Academy) graduates serving as ADCs outside the
Hankam structure. Not long afterwards, he seemed to some officers
to be ready to call back all active officers serving in a kekaryaan
role. This, in their view, would have severely weakened the army's
control over the apparatus of government. There were in 1980 some
16,000 military men serving in a kekaryaan role, half of them still ac-
tive and half retired.5 Jusuf appeared to take the view that all ac-
3.	Nugroho interview, November 21, 1981.
4.	Interview with Brig. Gen. Abdulkadir Besar, March 22, 1982.
5.	The figures for November 1980 were 8,156 active (of whom 1,957
were MPP (preretirement) and 8,674 retired, for a total of 16,830.
See "Jumlah Anggota ABRI Yang Ditempatkan di Luar Bidang Hankam/
ABRI," included in Pejuang cfan Prajurit, pp. 378-79.
The ABRI terminology, as many senior officers are ready to ad-
mit, is confusing. In theory, one might have thought, it does not
make much sense to say that a retired military man is serving in a
kekaryaan (nonmilitary) capacity. In fact, ABRI distinguishes be-
tween two kinds of kekaryaan. One category is the "organic ke-
karyaan," consisting of active military personnel, and the other the190
tive officers should be recalled, and that kekaryaan duties should be
left to retired officers. In the words of one officer, "General Jusuf
seems to be inclined towards the Turkish model. If given his way he
might withdraw all armed forces people from non-Hankam jobs and
only if things got bad would the armed forces intervene." According
to this officer, who played a key role in shaping the eventual
"Hankam paper," that view "is not popular among everyone else."* * 6
In short, Jusuf's views caused considerable consternation within the
upper echelons around Suharto. Darjatmo, who had served as chief
of staff for functional affairs (Kaskar) for nine years (1969-78) and
who had presided over the vast expansion of kekaryaan activities,
openly opposed the minister’s concept, if only because experience had
shown that it was difficult for Hankam to exercise effective control
over retired military men. As he observed in January 1980: "from
one side it is a good idea because the strength of the armed forces
"nonorganic kekaryaan," made up of retired military men. Interview
with General Darjatmo, January 21 , 1980.
6. Interview with Brig. Gen. Nugroho Notosusanto, July 27, 1981 .
This may have been an accurate statement if by "everyone else"
Nugroho was referring to the inner circle around Suharto. There
was, however, a good deal of support for Jusuf’s idea among other
groups, particularly among the "military professionals" who had been
eased out of key positions at the time of Malari. Thus General
Sumitro, who had given much thought to this matter at the time of
the restructuring of the armed forces in 1969, took the same view as
Jusuf, this being one of the few points on which he saw eye to eye
with the minister. (Sumitro interview, March 6, 1981.) The gover-
nor of Lemhannas, Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono, shared their opinion.
Jusuf’s proposal, he felt, was "very logical.” It was true, as Gen-
eral Darjatmo had pointed out, that the withdrawal of active military
men would create a problem from the army viewpoint and affect the
dwifungsi. "But actually we hope we don’t need that any more."
(Sutopo Juwono interview, July 23, 1981.) The position of Lt. Gen.
Charis Suhud, who had been appointed Kaskar in 1978, was not en-
tirely clear. According to Sutopo Juwono, Charis Suhud shared the
view that, in principle, active officers should be withdrawn from
kekaryaan duties. However, as we shall see, it was Charis Suhud,
apparently concerned over Jusuf’s plans, who was to commission the
"Hankam paper." That paper came out in favor of pruning unneces-
sary kekaryaan posts (which seemed to strike primarily at retired or
soon-to-be-retired military men) while endorsing a continuing role for
organic kekaryaan officers.
Brig. Gen. Abdulkadir Besar also believed that Jusuf was in-
clined towards the Turkish model. Jusuf, he felt, was not much in-
terested in politics and wanted to concentrate on ABRI’s role as a
professional military force. Jusuf, he thought, accepted that ABRI
had a social-political function but was not inclined to pay much atten-
tion to it. Interview with Abdulkadir Besar, March 22, 1982.191
can be maintained. Also there is no waste of money because the
salary is the salary of the armed forces and they [work] for the
armed forces. But on the other hand, it is easier to handle people of
the organic group because they are still disciplined, their promotions
are dependent on the Manhankam/Pangab while retired people are just
other citizens.7
For Darjatmo, there was not much to commend the view that
’’once an ABRI man, always an ABRI man.” Once a man had been
away from the armed forces for some time, he felt, the discipline was
’’not so tight.”8 Lt. Gen. Charis Suhud, Darjatmo's successor as
Kaskar, was equally concerned. According to one officer with a close
knowledge of these matters, Suhud believed that Jusuf was not only
on the verge of recalling all active officers but was toying with the
idea of abolishing the Kaskar job altogether.9 (Such fears would
seem to have been unfounded, if only because it is highly unlikely
that Suharto would ever have countenanced such a move.) As a re-
sult of this concern, it is said, Charis Suhud decided to commission a
paper of his own on the dwifungsi. Towards the middle of 1980, he
asked Dr. Nugroho Notosusanto, director of the Center for Armed
Forces’ History and an honorary brigadier general in the TNI, and
three other men—Brig. Cen. (retd.) A. S. S. Tambunan SH, Maj.
Cen. (retd.) Subiyono SH, and Drs. Hidayat Mukmin—to set out their
own views on the dwifungsi without being bound by any doctrine.10
Inviting the four men to write as scholars, Suhud told them that, if
they felt that the dwifungsi principle or the position of Kaskar should
be abolished, then they should say so, setting out their reasons.11
At first sight, it might appear that Suhud was opening up a Pan-
7.	Interview with General Darjatmo, January 21 , 1980. Sumitro
takes issue with Darjatmo on this point. According to Sumitro, the
"original idea" in the army headquarters in the late 1960s was that
only nonactive officers would be assigned as karyawan. There were
practical considerations for this. If, for example, an officer had
served two five-year terms as a governor or bupati "how the hell are
you going to absorb him back into the normal military system?" In-
terview with General Sumitro, March 6, 1981.
8.	Darjatmo interview, January 21 , 1980.
9.	Confidential communication. If Charis Suhud had taken the same
view as his former mentor, Sumitro, he would presumably have agreed
with Jusuf’s apparent intention of recalling all serving officers. Evi-
dently, he felt compelled to take a different view from Sumitro on this
point.
10.	Ibid. Nugroho described the paper as a "semi-official" work.
"We are official people but we are given the freedom not to espouse
the party line."
11.	Ibid. The team was made up of one historian (Nugroho), two
lawyers (Tambunan and Subiyono) and one political scientist (Hidayat
Mukmin).192
dora's box. In fact, the careful selection of the four-man review
team virtually ensured that the eventual paper would be sympathetic
to the views of the "realists." Nugroho, who had written his doctoral
dissertation on the Japanese-sponsored Indonesian auxiliary army
(Peta) formed during the wartime occupation, was known to be sym-
pathetically disposed towards the views of the ruling group.12 And
the other members of the team were no less sympathetic. A.S.S.
Tambunan, a member of the fraksi ABRI (ABRI grouping) in Parlia-
ment, was known to be a "violent opponent" of both Abdulkadir Besar
and the sort of thinking expressed in the Widodo paper.13 Subiyono
was also a fraksi ABRI member of Parliament. The one civilian in the
group, Drs. Hidayat Mukmin, a political scientist from Cajah Mada
University in Yogyakarta, had been a lecturer at Seskoad since 1959
and was a member of the staff of the coordinating minister of people's
welfare, General Surono.14
Almost immediately after their appointment, the team began to
gather material for the study. Tambunan and Subiyono held consul-
tations with the political parties and Golkar. Hidayat Mukmin talked
at length with civilian bureaucrats. By April 1981, the team had
come up with a preliminary (green cover) draft, a copy of which was
forwarded to the president by Charis Suhud. A more complete (red
cover) version was issued in June; this ran to 326 pages (not count-
ing appendixes) and was entitled Pejuang dan Prajurit: Konsepsi dan
Implementasi Dwifungsi ABRI. The paper was divided into two parts,
12.	Nugroho, for many years the director of the Institute of History
of Hankam, had been the co-author (with Colonel Ismail Saleh) of a
publication entitled The Coup Attempt of the September 30 Movement
In Indonesia (Jakarta: Pembimbing Masa, 1968), the Indonesian army's
version of the 1965 coup affair. Early in 1982 he was installed as the
rector of the University of Indonesia. When Suharto unveiled his
Fourth Development Cabinet the following year, Nugroho was named
minister of education. In 1981, Ismail Saleh, by now a major general,
was appointed attorney genera,. In May 1984, Lt. Gen. Ismail Saleh
was named minister of justice.
13.	Interview with Nugroho Notosusanto, July 27, 1981. Abdulkadir
Besar acknowledges this, but says that Tambunan was an opponent
"because he misunderstood my point of view." Abdulkadir says that
his approach in both the Seskoad and Widodo papers had been "be-
havioral"; he had interpreted the dwifungsi in cultural terms.
Tambunan had misunderstood his approach and concluded that he,
Abdulkadir, was adopting a "quantitative" approach, suggesting that
everything could be measured precisely and quantitatively.
Abdulkadir says he has never held such a view "because social action
cannot be measured exactly and mathematically." Interview, March
22, 1982.
14.	Mentioned by Drs. Hidayat Mukmin in a meeting on November 19,
1981. Subiyono and Hidayat Mukmin had both taught part-time at the
University of Indonesia.193
the first historical, the second structural. The historical section,
which dealt with the dwifungsi since 1945, was written in its entirety
by Nugroho. The structural part was divided into three chapters
—one by Tambunan on the concept of the dwifungsi, one by Subiyono
on its implementation (past and present), and one by Hidayat Mukmin
on the future of the dwifungsi, including its implementation.
Nugroho, who oversaw the project, supplied a comparative introduc-
tion for the volume.
Although commissioned by the chief of staff for functional
affairs—on the orders, according to one senior officer, of the presi-
dent and his associates15—the paper was not something that the gov-
ernment was obliged to accept. Ostensibly the private views of a
four-man group, it was, in the words of Nugroho, a staff study pro-
posing ideas which could either be accepted or rejected by the lead-
ership.16 There was little likelihood, however, that such a rejection
would be necessary. Quite early in their deliberations, the four-man
editorial team reached the conclusion that ABRI's dwifungsi should, in
principle, continue. This being so, the authors felt, it would be
quite wrong to dismantle the Kaskar position; so long as the dwi-
fungsi doctrine existed an agency would be needed to take care of
these functions.
In many ways, the report provided not only a rebuttal of the
sort of thinking found in the Widodo paper but a justification of
ABRI's continuing involvement in the nonmilitary sector. If Widodo
and Jusuf were in fact leaning towards the "Turkish model," their
views found no support in the Hankam paper. "We don't adhere to
the Turkish model," Nugroho remarked.
We think that according to our experience it's safer to
have the ABRI get involved completely, although we know
there are certain disadvantages—that ABRI, going down
in the mud, will get spattered also by the mud. While if
it remains on horseback it remains clean. So this is the
disadvantage. During the Sukarno period we were actu-
ally shifting towards the Turkish model. And the result
was Lubang Buaya [the "Crocodile Hole" where the bodies
of the six murdered generals were thrown after the Sep-
tember 1965 coup attempt]. So at least the present gen-
eration is apprehensive to try this again. So the basic
idea [of A.BRI] is to get involved completely—realizing the
consequences of being unable to maintain its cleanliness,
as the last resort of the nation to clean up. This means
that ABRI is fully responsible for what happens to the
15.	Confidential communication.
16.	Nugroho interview, July 27, 1981 .
17.	Ibid.194
nation. So if the nation goes down the drain—to use an
extreme example—ABRI is responsible.18
In one critical area—ABRI’s control of the high ground of the
Indonesian political and military system—the authors of the Hankam
paper come down firmly in favor of the status quo. The paper’s
basic theme is that ABRI should implement its dwifungsi at the apex
of the government pyramid. Its hold over the legislative and repre-
sentative branch should be secured by its continuing dominance of
the DPR and MPR. At the very least, the paper implies, ABRI will
continue to insist on seventy-five of the 460 seats in the DPR and on
one-third of the seats in the MPR; control over the MPR will ensure
that it is not possible for any hostile political group to exercise Ar-
ticle 37 and change the Constitution, an unlikely enough event in the
foreseeable future.19 ABRI’s hold over the executive branch is to be
18.	Ibid. It is, in fact, very much open to question whether Indo-
nesia was moving towards the "Turkish model" during the Sukarno
period. After the Presidential Decree of July 5, 1959, under which
Sukarno dissolved the Constituent Assembly and adopted the 1945
Constitution, there was a steady, even relentless, expansion of the
army’s involvement in the social-political field.
19.	The "fear" that certain groups were bent on changing the Con-
stitution has been something of a preoccupation with Suharto, and at
various times he has offered suggestions about ways in which the
sanctity of this document can be preserved. As we have seen, in his
Pekanbaru speech in March 1980, the president suggested that, if
two-thirds of the MPR members wished to change the Constitution, it
would be ABRI’s duty "to use weapons" to prevent them. Rather
than using weapons, he said, "we had better kidnap one out of the
two-thirds who wish to make the change." (See above, p. 157.) In
a speech in 1981 to Indonesians resident in Bangkok, Suharto raised
the possibility of a referendum being held before any change was
made in the Constitution. In his Independence Day speech in August
1981 Suharto devoted no less than four pages to the question of the
appointment of members of the MPR and DPR, and returned to the
theme of a referendum. The main consideration behind the appoint-
ment of one-third of the members of the MPR, he said, was to secure
a "constitutional safeguard" against the possibility of any alteration of
the Constitution or of any replacement of the Pancasila as the basis of
the state. In this context a "consensus" had been reached to have
one-third ABRI appointees. If the appointed armed forces members
failed to attend an MPR sitting, it was still possible for the non-ABRI
members to sit and put through a constitutional amendment "although
that possibility is extremely small." After some discussion of this and
related points, Suharto returned to the theme of blocking any poten-
tial change of the Constitution, however remote that might seem.
"Should the MPR indeed wish to alter the existing consensus and con-
sider doing away with the institution for the appointment of one-third
of the members of the assembly it is necessary to determine another195
maintained by its retention of the top executive positions, in particu-
lar the presidency and the ministries of Defense and Home Affairs.
Because Home Affairs is still considered a sensitive ministry, one can
conclude that it is likely to be the last nonmilitary department to wit-
ness the withdrawal of high-level kekaryaan ABRI personnel. A mili-
tary minister of home affairs, surrounded, as at present, by a pha-
lanx of senior military administrators, is likely to be a fact of life
well into the future.
If Nugroho and his colleagues were not prepared to give ground
on the need for a continuing ABRI involvement in society, they did at
least take the view that the army should relinquish a large number of
civilian posts. The Hankam paper argued that the army should be
much more selective in placing ABRI people outside the Defense Minis-
try. There was, it is true, a good deal of room for pruning. In
barely twenty years, the armed forces had moved in on the civilian
sector in a big way.
The appointment of army officers to nonmilitary positions had
begun modestly enough in 1957.20 But it had soon gathered momen-
tum, and by 1977 the number of ABRI personnel serving outside the
Defense Ministry had risen to 21,118.21 And though the number fell
by more than 4,000 to 16,830 in 1980, this was not due to any con-
scious policy to reduce numbers but was more a result of natural at-
trition.22 The bulk of the military men who left during this period
were middle-echelon officials who had been serving in government de-
partments; as they had reached retirement age their places had been
taken by qualified civilians from a lower age bracket.23 Into the
method of safeguarding.” The method the president had "considered"
was a decree from the MPR that, before that body make any such
change through the exercise of Article 17, the people ought first to
be asked about it through a referendum. (See Address of State by
President Suharto before the DPR, August 15,	1983, State Sec-
retariat, Jakarta, 1981.) In other words, the president appeared to
be suggesting that what was necessary was not merely a two-thirds
vote of the MPR, as the framers of the Constitution had decreed, but
a referendum as well. It is difficult to escape the feeling that this
preoccupation with the dangers posed by the free exercise of the
constitutional processes reflected a deep and abiding distrust of the
good judgment of the Indonesian people. It also implied that, in
Suharto’s eyes, there were major differences in perception between
the government leaders and the people as a whole, the talk of
ABRI-people unity notwithstanding.
20.	Nasution, in an interview (November 10, 1981), dated ABRI's di-
rect involvement in nonmilitary activities to this time.
21.	See "Jumlah Anggota ABRI Yang Ditempatkan di Luar Bidang
Hankam/ABRI" in Pejuang dan Prajurit.
22.	Ibid.
23.	Interview with Brig. Gen. Nugroho Notosusanto, July 27, 1981 .196
midst of this situation came the Hankam paper with its calls for a
substantial reduction in the number of military men serving in a
kekaryaan capacity.
At present, military men serving in this capacity—the most vis-
ible physical manifestation of ABRI's dual role in society—are divided
into three separate categories—penugaskaryaan, penyaluran, and
perbantuan. Penugaskaryaan, which in late 1980 accounted for 8,725
men, involves placing active military men in nominally civilian posi-
tions. These men, who can later return to Hankam, are the respon-
sibility of the Kaskar, not the assistant for personnel. In theory;
such placement must be based on the military man's usefulness to the
people and the nation in such a position, on his moral qualities, on
his expertise, his acceptability in the environment in which he is to
be placed, and on his previous experience. In practice, the appoint-
ment of men to penugaskaryaan positions is sometimes done with an
eye not on the urgency of an ABRI man holding a particular position
but more on a desire to reward a friend or colleague with a comfort-
able post. The appointment of prominent military officers as ambassa-
dors is one of the more obvious examples of this kind of practice.
The penyaluran category, which in November 1980 accounted for
very nearly as many ABRI personnel as the penugaskaryaan, is some-
what different in composition. It is made up of officers and men
who, although still on the active list at the time of their civilian
appointment, are approaching retirement and not expected to return
to Hankam. Thus, an ABRI man who will soon be retiring might, be-
cause of his distinguished record in the revolution, be put into a
civilian slot that allows him "to spend the rest of his life peace-
fully."2tt Although expected to perform his job in a dutiful manner
and set an example, he is not given any specific mission to accomplish
or any particular target to meet. In November 1980, this subgroup
accounted for 7,031 people or almost 42 percent of all kekaryaan posi-
tions. More often than not, appointments were simply "retirement
presents" from headquarters.
The perbantuan category is different again. A military man so
designated is merely attached to a certain position on a short-term
basis to perform a particular task or solve a particular problem. He
may serve, for example, as an adviser to a governor, as a member of
a special committee or advisory council, or may be attached to a cer-
tain factory to solve a problem of labor unrest. In most regards,
perbantuan simply means short-term penugaskaryaan. However, a
military man serving in this capacity is not put under the kekaryaan
administration. His career remains in the hands of the assistant for
personnel, and is not taken over by the Kaskar. Many of the ADCs
to ABRI functionaries were included under this heading. However,
by 1982 almost all of these officers had been recalled by Jusuf.
24. Interview with Brig. Gen. Nugroho Notosusanto, November 21,
1981.197
The primary concern of the authors of the Hankam paper was
that penugaskaryaan positions should in future be filled with much
greater selectivity than was currently the case. Before any ABRI
man was put into a civilian position, they argued, it should first be
clear that the appointment was essential. There were two reasons for
this. First, the armed forces could not afford to squander their lim-
ited manpower. Second, many civilians had now been trained—in
such places as the Institut Pemerintahan Dalam Negri (Civil Service
Institute of the Department of Home Affairs)—to serve as bupati and
so on. These people, being professionals, were well qualified to as-
sume responsibility, and an ABRI man should only be brought in over
their heads if the position were still considered rawon (vulnerable),
either physically or politically.
A secondary and closely related concern centered on the
penyaluran category. The authors of the Hankam paper argued
strongly that the Ministry of Defense should abandon the practice of
putting military men out to grass in a penyaluran capacity. Many of
these appointees, they said, were considered brengsek (rotten) by
the community at large, and this was harming ABRI's image. If the
military was looking for some way to cut the fat from its kekaryaan
structure, the paper suggested, then abolition of penyaluran appoint-
ments was an obvious first step. That sort of reasoning seemed to
find ready acceptance at the top. When President Suharto received
senior officers at the palace after the Rapim ABRI (ABRI Commanders
Call) in April 1981, his speech reflected not just the view that the
dwifungsi should remain in place but also that the penyaluran should
not be treated as a dumping ground for unwanted personnel.
"Kekaryaan ABRI," the president said, "should not be just a matter
of channeling individuals into comfortable positions." ("Kekaryaan
ABRI jangan sampoi menjadi penyaluran ,")25 The suggested abolition
of penyaluran appointments also found favor with General Sumitro,
who had been responsible for restructuring the armed forces in 1969.
As he noted
I do not agree with such appointments. If an officer
reaches the time of MPP [preretirement] or retirement,
give him his retirement. Don’t try to find any other jobs
for these people. It will create resentment and disap-
pointment among the civilians. But on the other hand, it
is a challenge for the civilians to make themselves better.
... I accept that professionally all these officers are
nothing if you compare them with a civilian with the pro-
fessional educational background. He [the officer] is
nothing! But he’s got the guts to do something. The
training to take decisions. And he’s bold. Sometimes
without this [his head]. Very bold!26
25.	See speech by President Suharto, April 1981.
26.	Interview with General Sumitro, December 12, 1981.198
Table V. Total ABRI Members Serving Outside Hankam
Total
No.	Officers/Groupings	1977 (May)		1980 (Nov/	
	Central Government				
1.	Ministers, Heads of High State Institutions	17	(42,5%)	19	(47,5%)
2.	Secretaries General	14	(73,6%)	14	(73,6%)
3.	Inspectors General	18	(29,5%)	18	(29,5%)
4.	Directors General	15	(78,9%)	15	(78,9%)
5.	Heads/Chiefs Nondepartmental Institutions	8	(44,4%)	8	(44,4%)
6.	Ministerial Secretaries, Assistant Ministers (one level)	21	(84%)	21	(84%)
	Total	76	(53,5%)	76	(53,5%)
	Regional Heads/Representatives	Abroad			
7.	Governors	19	(70,3%)	19	(70,3%)
8.	Bupatis	136	(56,4%)	137	(56,6%)
9.	Mayors	19	(31,6%)	20	(33,3%)
10.	Ambassadors	24	(41%)	28	(44,4%)
11.	Charges d’affaires	1	(50%)	1	(50%)
12.	Consuls General	4	(25%)	4	(25%)
13.	Indonesian Consuls	2	(9,5%)	2	(9,5%)
	Total	31	(31,9%)	35	(34,3%)
	Groupings				
14.	Penugaskaryaan		—	8725	
15.	Penyaluran		—	7031	
16.	Perbantuan		—	1071	
	Total		—	16830	
	Status				
17.	Active		8715	6199	
18.	MPP (Pre-retirement)		12405	1957	
19.	Pensioned		—	8674	
21118	16830
Total199
Table V. (Continued)
No.	Officers/Croupings	Total	
		1977 (May)	1980 (Nov.)
20.	Legislative (MPR/DPR)	1806	1480
21.	Executive Source	19312	10203*
22.	Army	17004	12873
23.	Navy	926	823
24.	Air Force	698	777
25.	Police	2490	2357
	Total	21,118	16,830
*Although these figures are obviously incomplete, there has been a
clear and dramatic fall in the number of ABRI officers serving in the
executive branch.
SOURCE:	Pejuang don Prajurit: Konsepsi dan Implementasi Dwi
Fungsi ABRI.200
In the view of the authors of the Hankam paper, Pepabri should
take over the process of penyaluran from ABRI. Pepabri should
know what vacancies exist in the civilian sector and should suggest
the names of ex-ABRI men who could fill these positions. This, it
was argued, would prevent a situation in which ABR, continued to in-
fluence such appointments. At the same time, the authors believed
that the phasing out of the penyaluran category should be done care-
fully and gradually. If it were done abruptly, they feared, those
currently in such positions might "join other political forces."2'
From even a cursory glance, it is clear that the Hankam paper
called for some fairly significant changes in the implementation of
ABRI’s dwifungsi. It said in effect that, when those currently in
kekaryaan functions retired, they should not be replaced by other
ABRI people unless strictly necessary. This would entail a dramatic
and substantial—but "natural"—reduction in the number of military
men serving in nonmilitary positions by the mid-1980s. By implica-
tion, there would be fewer military governors, fewer bupati, fewer
camat, fewer ambassadors, fewer middle-level functionaries. Even in
private, the authors of the paper were unable to say just what this
proposal, if implemented, would mean in terms of numbers. However,
Nugroho conceded that it could mean that the number of military gov-
ernors and bupati would be halved.
In mid-1981, after completing the second draft, the authors of
the paper sought some feedback on their views from within the sys-
tem. Initially, mid-career officers at Seskogab, the Joint Services’
Staff and Command School, were asked to read and comment on the
paper. The response is said to have been very favorable. Later,
the authors asked Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono if they could present their
work to a selected team of people from Lemhannas. The outcome of
this encounter proved to be somewhat unexpected. The authors say
they had anticipated a fierce attack on their suggestions regarding
the dwifungsi doctrine and were surprised to find that their basic
proposals went unchallenged. When a copy of the paper was for-
warded at about the same time to Lt. Gen. T. B. Simatupang, the
former armed forces chief of staff found himself in almost complete
agreement with the recommendations and used some of the thoughts
contained in the document as the basis of a series of editorials he
wrote in Sinar Harapan.28
The national leadership also seemed pleased with the paper.
Suharto, as we have seen, drew on sections of it when he addressed
senior officers following the Rapim ABRI in April 1981. When, six
months later, he spoke at the October 5 Armed Forces Day celebra-
tions at Cilegon, West Java, he seemed to put his imprimatur firmly
on the paper's assessment of where ABRI stood in society. ABRI, he
27.	Nugroho Notosusanto interview, November 21, 1981.
28.	Ibid. Confirmed by Lt. Gen. Simatupang in an interview, March
19. 1982.201
said, would not go in the direction of militarism, authoritarianism, or
totalitarianism.29 In December 1981, the Hankam paper was accepted
by senior ABRI officers who assembled in Bandung for the Prelimi-
nary Commanders Call, and in 1984 it was published in book form.
Some, however, were not impressed. General Sumitro, who was
in favor of a progressive—but not unlimited—transfer of power to ci-
vilians, found nothing new in the proposals. "It is not a new idea!
It is not new! Nothing new! Even during my time [there was talk
about this]! You can ask Darjatmo if he's honest enough! Darjatmo!
Charis Suhud! Topo Juwono! Nothing new!"30
29.	See "Kemanunggalan ABRI dan Rakyat," (Amanat Pada Upacara
Peringatan Hari Ulang Tahun ABRI Ke XXXVI, Pada Tanggal 5
Oktober 1981, Di Cilegon, Jawa Barat), in Mimbar Kekaryaan ABRI
(Jakarta: Hankam, Edisi: 130, Oktober 1981), pp. 3-7. In his
speech, Suharto said that with the unity of ABRI and the people and
with the implementation of the dwifungsi, the role and activities of
ABRI as fighters and soldiers must always constitute a safeguard to
the Pancasila for the realization of social justice for the entire Indo-
nesian people. Within this framework, the role of ABRI as fighters
and soldiers was not sliding towards militarism, authoritarianism, or
totalitarianism (tidak okan meluncur pada kekuasaan yang militeristis,
otoriter atau totaliter). See also "Peranan ABRI Tidak Meluncur ke
Militeristis," Merdeka, October 6, 1981. The president repeated these
assurances in March 1982 when he addressed nearly 2,000 senior offi-
cers who had participated in the Commanders Call in Bandung. (In-
donesian Times, March 15, 1982.) Earlier, Jusuf had said that the
military's dual function was aimed at spurring the growth of political
and economic democracy. ABRI's involvement in nonmilitary affairs
would not kill democracy or society's initiative in the political or
economic sphere. (Indonesian Observer, March 15, 1982.)
It is interesting to note that General Surono, deputy commander
of the armed forces and spokesman for the ABRI faction in the MPR,
had made much the same point during the plenary session debate that
preceded Suharto's reelection in 1978. ABRI's dual function, he said,
was "an essential element of our political system," and was not a re-
flection of militarism or disguised militarism. Kompas, March 16,
1978.
30.	Interview with General Sumitro, December 12, 1981. Sumitro be-
lieved that it was time to start handing positions back to the civil-
ians. But he argued that there were three important steps that had
to be followed. First, there had to be an overall concept and a clear
policy that certain positions would continue to be "occupied" by ABRI
people. (This was in line with the Nugroho group's proposals, al-
though Sumitro was not familiar with their paper or, it seems, partic-
ularly in sympathy with Nugroho.) Second, it was necessary to make
an evaluation of all ABRI bupati. Perhaps half of them or a third of
them were good—"accepted by the civilians, by everyone." "They
have their achievement, their performance is very good, excellent and202
Senior members of the ex-FKS group felt the recommendations
did not go far enough. Nasution doubted that the key proposals of
the Hankam paper would ever be implemented. As he noted in No-
vember 1981: “The whole problem is what you are saying is not what
you are doing. I think that when they are talking about this they
are still upholding some idealism, and so they are speaking for the
record. But they are still doing the same. . . . The number of
kekaryaan appointments is still growing, still growing. They are go-
ing down, even the lurah and so on. So it’s increasing, not decreas-
ing. "31
Jusuf had proposed that kekaryaan duties be reserved for re-
tired officers, Nasution noted. But Darjatmo had opposed this be-
cause he had felt that the government would lose control. "What
Darjatmo is saying is the policy of the government,” said Nasution.
’’But they are not speaking openly."32 Fosko had proposed that
there were enough retired officers to serve as members of Parliament
and so on. But the President had refused. "He likes to have active
officers because you can order them, control them." Nasution felt
that the outlook of active military officers was too "ABRI-centric."
He did not feel such an approach would be enough or long lasting.
This was a national problem and therefore it was necessary to have a
national approach, one based on the 1945 Constitution.
In the view of a number of retired officers, the refusal of those
in power to contemplate an easing of the military’s grip on the most
important institutions was totally unacceptable. As Nugroho himself
admitted: "they say we should withdraw completely from politics and
sit on the mountain and look down on the people in the valley caring
for the country. And if anything should go wrong—but only then—
should the people here go down. This is the Turkish model."33
Whatever the reservations of the retired generals, the Hankam
paper was clearly of importance in the continuing debate over ABRI’s
role in Indonesian society. There are, however, two intriguing ques-
tions that remain unanswered. Who precisely was behind this paper?
so on. Why not use them? And the rest, you kick them out! Give
them training, give them money or something and let them do some-
thing else." Finally, it was necessary to make an honest evaluation
of potential civilian bupati and select those who were "ripe enough to
be exposed." (Ibid.) If the Hankam paper was suggesting that
ABRI, as a matter of principle, withdraw military bupati wherever
possible, Sumitro did not agree; he took the view that the good ones
could be left where they were. This may have amounted to much the
same thing, as Nugroho and his group had allowed for the need for
incumbents to be phased out gradually.
31.	Interview with General Nasution, November 10, 1981.
32.	Ibid.
33.	Nugroho interview, November 21 , 1984.203
And why was such a document proposed at this particular time? On
the face of it, the initiative came from Charis Suhud. He was the of-
ficer who "commissioned” Nugroho and the others to prepare such a
document, and he was the one who ushered it through its prepublica-
tion phase, forwarding a preliminary draft to the president himself.
Yet there are grounds for believing that Charis Suhud was no more
than an instrument of others in this, an obedient servant who fol-
lowed the instructions that were given to him. In the view of a num-
ber of senior officers, Charis Suhud had been a disappointment as
Kaskar. "Many of us feel Charis Suhud has failed," a prominent
two-star officer noted in 1981. "He is not strong. "3i+ In the years
when Darjatmo had served as chief of staff for functional affairs, he
had been an important and influential figure. A trusted associate of
Suharto, whom he had known since 1950, he served as chief karya
not only for the minister of defense but for the president as well.
When Darjatmo was Kaskar, he had a decisive say on the selection
and appointment of all key karyawan and played a central role in
drawing up the CBHN. He had been deeply involved in all manner of
political problems, and not simply those touching on army matters.
He had made it a point to keep in regular contact with political
leaders, particularly from the younger generation, and met them twice
a month in his office. He had been very well informed. He had, in
short, been the very model of a modern political commissar. And
when he moved across to the DPR, he seemed to take many of those
key functions with him, leaving Charis Suhud with little more than
administrative responsibilities.
Charis Suhud was a thoughtful and reflective man. Like Sutopo
Juwono, he was from that stream within army intelligence which be-
lieved certain moral precepts should guide government actions.35
Like Sutopo Juwono, he was very much in agreement with those in
the armed forces who believed in conciliation. In his view, it was im-
portant for the army leaders to maintain links with the dissident gen-
erals, not to cut them off and treat them as enemies. But, like so
many others in senior positions in the army, he was caught between
the demands of his superiors and the demands of his conscience, a
handicap made all the more difficult by the fact that the more "princi-
pled" officers within the intelligence establishment had lost influence
at the time of the Malari Affair and were still regarded with some re-
serve by their more "pragmatic" colleagues. Lacking a close personal
34.	Confidential communication, November 11, 1981.
35.	Intellectually, Charis Suhud had been a pupil of the late Maj.
Gen. Suwarto, a man frequently described as "PSI" in outlook.
Charis Suhud and Sutopo Juwono, who were instructors at Seskoad in
the late 1950s, were two of Suwarto’s closest assistants. They are
unlikely, however, to have shared Suwarto’s PSI outlook, and their
tie with him was probably more through their Siliwangi and intelli-
gence activities. (I am indebted to Prof. Ben Anderson for making
the latter point.)204
connection with Suharto, lacking perhaps the political skills and
dynamism of his predecessor, and left with a job that had been
stripped of some of its most important functions, Charis Suhud
seemed to many to be little more than a military bureaucrat. Before
long, he seemed to lose touch with the civilian political leaders
—Darjatmo, at the DPR, was taking care of that—and senior officers
who had once made a point of attending his twice-monthly briefing
sessions began sending their excuses; Charis Suhud, they com-
plained, was not his own man. The briefings, said one officer, were
”a waste of time and energy.” Charis Suhud could not even say,
"Take it or leave it. I am just following orders.” He gave no im-
pression that he would fight, as Yoga, Sutopo Juwono, or Ali Murtopo
would have done, for something he believed in.36
If not Charis Suhud, then who? The answer may have been
someone below him—Nugroho Notosusanto is one obvious possibility
—or someone above him. Nugroho had in the past written any num-
ber of papers on ABRI's role in society—his most recent effort in this
direction had been the first part of Jusuf’s blue book in 1979—and he
may well have suggested such a project to Charis Suhud. Alterna-
tively, the idea may have come from Suharto himself, or, at any rate,
from someone close to him, perhaps Darjatmo. If this was, in fact,
the case, it raises the equally intriguing question of whether Suharto
had become convinced, amid the furor that had followed the Pekan-
baru speech, that it was necessary to make a fundamental adjustment
to ABRI’s role. The senior leadership may have decided that the time
had come to limit military involvement in the civilian sector, at least
at the middle and lower levels. But on the evidence available, there
is room for skepticism. The leadership may publicly endorse the
recommendations contained in the Hankam paper. But it remains to
be seen whether those proposals are implemented. In the meantime,
Indonesians are confronted with the paradox that appeared at the time
of Golkar’s Second National Congress in 1978. As the talk of a pull-
back increased, the military's grip over the institutions of the state
was growing still tighter.
36. Confidential communication.CHAPTER TEN
THE VIEWS OF GENERAL NASUTION
When I was Commander of the Siliwangi (aged 28 years)
the Siliwangi was my pride. Siliwangi meant everything
to me. Then when I became deputy Commander-in-Chief
(aged 30 years) and later army chief of staff, the TNI
was my pride. After becoming chairman of the MPRS, I
emphasized my dedication to the people. But now, the
older I become, it is God’s will that is most important to
me.
—General Nasution, 19771
Of all the retired generals who locked horns with the govern-
ment in the late 1970s and early 1980s, none was more important than
Abdul Haris Nasution. Nasution had been a dominant figure in the
armed forces since the early days of the revolution and had earned a
reputation not only as a tactician and strategist of considerable re-
nown, but also as a shrewd—if sometimes hesitant—actor on the polit-
ical stage.
Nasution was less than three years older than Suharto and most
of the other key members of his group. But his career had blos-
somed much earlier—he had been a major general when Suharto was
still a captain—and he seemed at times to be of an entirely different
generation. In a sense he was. An Outer Islander and a graduate
of the prewar Royal Military Academy in Bandung, Nasution did not
have a great deal in common with the Japanese-trained—and largely
Javanese—officers in Peta. His sense of values tended to be more in
line with those of the prewar civilian politicians (albeit with a more
authoritarian streak), and his commitment to Islam contrasted with the
more permissive attitude of the largely abangan Javanese. Moreover,
Nasution’s age advantage, although slight, was to give him a very
different perspective from that of the Peta officers. The dominant
experience in the lives of these men had been the Indonesian revolu-
tion—the period of revolutionary ardor (semangat) and struggle that
had culminated in the overthrow of Dutch colonial rule. Nasution,
who had come to maturity during the Japanese occupation, tended to
take a more detached view of the years of physical revolution, and
1. General Nasution in an address to Siliwangi ’’seniors” in 1977.
Mentioned by Nasution in a written communication dated November 14,
1981.
205206
was able to note the shortcomings as well as the advantages of the
pemuda (youth) struggle.
Nasution’s career had been rich in accomplishment. Elected the
first commander of the Siliwangi (West Java) division in 1946, he had
served as deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces (1948) and
later as the head of the Java Military Command. He had had two
terms as chief of staff of the army (1950-52 and 1955-62), had served
as chief of staff of the armed forces after 1962 and been minister of
defense between 1959 and 1966. Instrumental in mapping out the
strategy that was to stalemate the Dutch, he had gone on to play a
central role in forging a modern, professional army out of the dispa-
rate group of pemuda struggle organizations that had carried the rev-
olution to success. Later, he had been successful in crushing a
series of regional rebellions and in suppressing Muslim militants bent
on the creation of an Islamic state. Equally important, he ranked as
a major military theoretician. His book Fundamentals of Guerrilla
Warfare has been described as a classic on insurgency and ranked
with the works of Mao Zedong and Vo Nguyen Giap. Nasution was
the man who formulated many of the doctrines on which the TNI was
based. In 1958, he set out his famous "Middle Way" formulation of
the army's political role, in which he affirmed that the armed forces
should neither seek to dominate the political processes nor exist
merely as a "dead tool" in the hands of a civilian government. He
elaborated this concept in his Armed Forces Day speech in 1963, fore-
shadowing later theories of the military's dwifungsi, a concept form-
ally adopted at the first army seminar in Bandung in April 1965 and
developed still further at the second army seminar the following year.
Nasution was pushed into a parliamentary backwater as the
forces around Suharto gathered self-confidence in the postcoup
period, and by 1968 the estrangement between him and the new presi-
dent was complete; although after that date they would exchange rit-
ual pleasantries if they met by chance at some social function, they
had no further communication. As far as Nasution was concerned,
the catalyst for this falling out was the president's decision to re-
structure the MPRS "to his own liking," and then "virtually ignore"
both the body and its chairman. For the following four years,
Nasution lived in a kind of limbo; although chairman of what was
nominally the highest institution in the nation, he was increasingly
ignored and isolated by the new powerholders.
Critics have suggested that there was some fata, flaw in
Nasution’s character, a flaw which hampered his effectiveness at criti-
cal times. Military men, particularly those around Suharto, sought to
focus attention on his seeming immobility at several critical points in
the nation's history, most particularly in the wake of the 1965 coup
attempt. A number of explanations have been advanced for this, not
least that Nasution had narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, in
which his small daughter had been fatally wounded and his aide also
killed, and he was in an obvious state of shock. There can be little
doubt that this was the case. But nevertheless some prominent Indo-207
nesians contend, the defense minister failed to take command at a time
when this was necessary and when it would have been possible. On
the evening of October 1, Adam Malik, a relative of Nasution, went to
the defense minister at the hospital where his daughter had been
taken and urged him to rally the non-Communist forces. "Now there
is only you,” Malik said. ’’You are the senior general. Go to
Kostrad. Take over. Everyone will support you."2 Nasution is said
to have replied, "How can I leave the hospital, my daughter?" To
which Malik responded that he and his wife would look after
Nasution’s wife and daughter, and repeated his insistence that
Nasution take over. Nasution answered, "We already decided this af-
ternoon to support Suharto. So support Suharto." Malik, recounting
this tale, concluded with the question, "How can you have a general
like that at a critical time?"—a sentiment frequently echoed by mem-
bers of Suharto’s inner circle, who say that Suharto offered Nasution
the command of the army on no less than four separate occasions.
Nasution counters, that, in fact, the situation was never so straight-
forward. Sukarno, who had managed to shunt Nasution aside in
1962, succeeded not only in opposing any moves to restore him to a
position of power in the postcoup period but in persuading the four
key Java commanders also to oppose Nasution’s return.
Prior to 1962, Nasution agrees, he had had the power to take
over the country, had he so wished.3 He had not done this, the re-
peated entreaties of certain officers and civilian politicians notwith-
standing, he says, because he did not believe it was the army’s role
to assume power. After 1962, he notes, he was no longer in command
and thus no longer had it within his capacity to take over, even if he
had wanted to. Now, as events unfolded in the wake of the coup, he
was outmanoeuvered not only by Sukarno but by the army com-
manders who remained loyal to the president and who had little desire
to see Nasution return to a position of authority.
With Yani's death, Suharto had, under written standing proce-
dures, automatically become acting commander of the army. Later,
after Sukarno had been forced to dismiss his own interim candidate
for this post, General Pranoto Reksosamudro, Suharto became full
commander of the army. And it is not true, Nasution insists, that
Suharto offered him the leadership four times. Suharto did ask
Nasution’s permission to propose his name as chief of the Koti staff, a
position previously held by Yani. However, Sukarno is said to have
refused, and Suharto did not persist. On another occasion, several
regional councils suggested that Nasution be named vice president.
This proposal was equally unacceptable to Sukarno, and Suharto,
without consulting Nasution, reportedly issued a statement saying
there was no need to fill this position. On yet another occasion,
Suharto told Nasution he would propose him as vice minister of the
defense department. But again Sukarno was supposedly unyielding,
2.	Interview with Adam Malik, March 1 , 1984.
3.	Interview with General Nasution, March 11 , 1982.208
reportedly saying on one occasion, ’’The commanders have to choose
between me and Nas." Finally, when the MPRS was being convened,
Alamsjah went to Nasution’s house on behalf of Suharto and asked him
to become chairman of this body, a proposal which Nasution said he
was willing to accept. But here too Sukarno made his displeasure
known, Nasution says, particularly over a provision by which Nasu-
tion would have become acting president in his absence. The com-
promise eventually hammered out named Suharto, not Nasution, as
acting president in Sukarno’s absence. In these circumstances it is
difficult to escape the conclusion that Suharto's four "offers" to
Nasution were more a matter of form than substance. And given Su-
harto's increasingly strong position, Nasution seems to have had very
few cards to play. On the other hand, it is equally difficult to
escape the conclusion that Nasution’s explanation turns on an almost
excessively legalistic interpretation of the situation, an approach not
necessarily appropriate in the circumstances. In this regard it might
be pointed out that Suharto deliberately chose to ignore certain legal
and constitutional niceties in the difficult days of 1965-66 in the in-
terests of what he doubtless saw as the greater national good. In
retrospect, there probably was only a brief moment on October 1
when Nasution could have made an attempt to take control. And his
failure to seize this opportunity, for whatever reasons, give his sub-
sequent eclipse an air of inevitability, his career falling victim this
time not just to the manoeverings of Sukarno and certain senior offi-
cers but to his own inability to act as well.
Be that as it may, Nasution remained a major figure in Indone-
sia, exercising a moral authority over many who were still in uniform;
he was respected for his idealism, his probity, his sense of justice.
He was, as men like Murdani were prepared to admit in private, the
critic who disturbed the government most. Late in May 1980, after
the "Petition of Fifty" had been presented to the Parliament and the
battle joined over the president's interpretation of Pancasila, senior
officers from Hankam, including Murdani, began giving special brief-
ings to middle-ranking officers from all over Indonesia to reinforce
their basic indoctrination. This continued for about six weeks. On
one occasion, all of the country's Kodim commanders (about 200 in all)
were assembled in Bandung for a briefing by officers from army
headquarters about the "errors" of those who sought to criticize the
government. "We know many of these [officers] still have a lot of
respect for people like Nasution," Murdani admitted afterwards, "but
we need to show them that they must be loyal to the present ABRI
leadership.,,i+ Jusuf Wanandi, a long-time associate of Murtopo and
Murdani, made much the same point when answering suggestions that
the government might take strong action against the former minister
4. Murdani made this comment in a discussion with Warwick Beutler,
the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) correspondent in
Jakarta, on June 14, 1980. Communication with Beutler, June 15,
1980. The "loyalty briefings" were attended by all officers above the
level of major.209
of defense. "Nasution is the last person they would touch,” he said.
"They still recognize him as the senior. He is the only one who is
clean. ”5
There were, running	through Nasution’s	contemporary	criti-
cisms, three major, interrelated themes.6 First,	the man who	in	the
late 1950s had pioneered the	successful campaign	for a return	to	the
1945 Constitution, was in the	late 1970s and early	1980s calling	on	the
government to implement that document in a "pure and consistent"
manner. Second, the man who had introduced the doctrine of the
dwifungsi was calling on those same leaders to purge it of its transi-
tional and emergency excesses, to strip away the accretions that had
built up since the coup, accretions which were, in his opinion, seri-
ously distorting the original doctrine. Third, the man who had
served as the right-hand man to the late General Sudirman, the
1945-50 Commander-in-Chief of the Indonesian armed forces, was call-
ing on the army leaders to implement Sudirman's last message before
his death: that ABRI must stand above all groups in society and not
side with any particular faction. In doing this, Nasution was taking
issue with those in power who had thrown the army’s support behind
Golkar (another, albeit radically altered, product of Nasution’s think-
ing about functional representation) in order to help it romp home in
successive general elections.7 Finally, and more generally, Nasution
argued that the government was concentrating "almost exclusively" on
security and economic growth, and was postponing the solution of
fundamental social problems.8 At the same time, there was a continu-
ing stress on the anticorruption theme, a cause he had pursued con-
5.	Interview with Jusuf Wanandi, June 5, 1980.
6.	Nasution did not adopt this categorization himself, or always dis-
tinguish clearly between the various arguments, many of which tended
in any case to run into one another. However, this is, I believe, a
useful way of examining the criticisms he makes of the present sys-
tem.
7.	The following analysis of Nasution’s political thinking is based on
interviews with the former defense minister over the period 1979-83
and on a study of other material, published and unpublished, in
which he has outlined his views. I am particularly grateful to Gen-
eral Nasution for a sixteen-page typewritten response to questions
submitted to him. In this document, which was dated June 7, 1980,
he set forth his views in some detail. Other material was drawn from
interviews held on May 10 and 11 , 1979; June 23 and July 7, 1980;
March 2, July 24, and November 10, 1981; March 11 and 23, 1982;
and August 9, 1983.
8.	See, for example, the report in Antora, September 17, 1977.
Nasution elaborated on these matters in interviews with the corre-
spondents of Reuters and the Economist in October 1981. Copies of
these replies were made available by General Nasution.210
sistently since the days of the Operasi Budhi campaign during the
Guided Democracy period.
These points are worth looking at in some detail, even if—
indeed, precisely because—Nasution's actions while in power sometimes
fell well short of the constitutional propriety he now demanded from
others, and even if he was vulnerable to the charge that in creating
the dwifungsi doctrine, not to mention "baptizing1’ it with a name and
identity of its own, he had, with what seemed to some a fairly cava-
lier disregard of the consequences, laid the foundations for the very
excesses of military intervention he now so roundly condemned.
a) The Call for a More Faithful Implementation of the
Constitution
When the TKR [Tentara Keamanan Rakyat, People’s Peace-
keeping Army, the precursor of the TNI] was founded, it
was implanted that the Constitution is the basis and
policy of the army.
—Gen. Nasution, 19799
October 17, 1952, was half a coup. It split the army into
two camps. . . . Since then I have not believed in
coups, I believe in loyalty to the Constitution.
—Gen. Nasution, 195910
From 1957-62, when Nasution exercised far-reaching powers
under the SOB (State of War and Siege) regulations, he acted in a
manner which was often every bit as authoritarian as that of the cur-
rent ruling group and one which had next to nothing to do with the
Constitution. He banned political activities, suppressed newspapers,
9.	Nasution, in a letter to Tempo, June 9, 1979. The doctrine that
the Constitution was the basis and policy of the army [UUD adalah
azas dan politik tentara) was formulated by President Sukarno early
in 1946 and issued as an amanat (message, or order of the day). It
found immediate support at the top levels of the armed forces.
Sudirman, according to Nasution, was "a good military man" and said,
"Sukarno said that. We will stick to that." Although technically the
doctrine dates from early 1946, Nasution always referred to it as the
"45 message." Interview with General Nasution, November 10, 1981.
10.	Quoted in Louis Fischer, The Story of Indonesia (New York:
Harper, 1959), p. 289. Nasution says that this was "half a coup" in
the sense that it was against Parliament but not against the presi-
dent. (Interview, March 11 , 1982.) Looked at in one way, it has
been suggested, the logic here is that the only reason for holding to
the Constitution is to prevent the army being split.211
imprisoned opposition figures, and generally dealt harshly with all
those who stood in the army’s way. He also formulated a doctrine
under which the military claimed for itself a permanent role in the so-
cial, political, and economic affairs of the state. In later years,
Nasution sought to project himself as a strict constitutionalist—at
least insofar as the 1945 Constitution was concerned—and in many
ways he had indeed become one. But those who recalled his activities
while in power regarded all this with a certain amount of skepticism,
and there were, by Nasution's own admission, certain areas where the
commitment to constitutionalism was less than total. Be that as it
may, the constitutional thread that runs through his writings is un-
mistakable.
Nasution, who fought and won the battle to return to the 1945
Constitution, stresses that even in an emergency situation the Consti-
tution should be the basis of government action. The main task facing
the Indonesian leadership, he argues, is to implement the Constitution
in a pure and consistent manner ”in a programatic way in the not-
too-distant future."
The New Order government has gone through the motions of
adhering strictly to the Constitution, he maintains, holding general
elections at periodic intervals, providing for the existence of the
MPR/DPR and other institutions, allowing these bodies to debate the
Broad Outlines of State Policy, the budget, and so on. But in truth,
the spirit of the Constitution has not been observed. The army has
moved onto center stage, and its role has become "far greater than
we had planned."11 The major props supporting New Order rule are,
in his opinion, patently unconstitutional. The army leadership, he
says, is underpinned by the emergency powers conferred by both the
decree establishing Kopkamtib and by the so-called Supersemar
decision of March 11 , 1966, under which President Sukarno
transferred executive authority to General Suharto. What is more,
Suharto, as the holder of the authority vested in him by the
Supersemar decree, has made excessive use of the transition powers
(kekuasaan-kekuasaan peralihan) granted to him; these powers en-
abled him to nominate members of the MPRS and put military men into
nonmilitary positions at all levels and echelons of society "from village
head to president, from chairman of the DPRD [Regional Legislative
Assembly] to the chairman of the MPR."12 With the authority vested
in him by the Kopkamtib and Supersemar decrees, executive power
has centered on Suharto, and he has made full use of the army in
order to achieve his objectives. Gradually, Nasution argues, Suharto
assumed a central position in the political and legislative processes.
For example, in 1966, the DPR leadership authorized Suharto, as
mandataris (mandatory) of the MPRS, to increase the membership of
the lower house by 50 percent through nominations. Expanded by
the addition of governmental nominees, the DPR had then forwarded a
11.	Interview with General Nasution.
12.	Ibid.212
resolution that Suharto should change and add to the membership of
the MPRS. Subsequently, the DPR had approved the General Election
Law and the law relating to the system for installing people's repre-
sentatives and party delegates in the MPR/DPR, which Suharto then
implemented. Early in 1968, Suharto changed the house membership
on a large scale, thus producing the dominant Golkar fraksi (group-
ing). The purpose of these steps, Nasution argues, was not only to
ensure that no attempt could be made to change the Pancasila or the
1945 Constitution but also, as a matter of practical politics, to guar-
antee Suharto's continuation in office.13
Nasution's thinking on this subject in the late 1970s is best re-
flected in a letter he sent to the MPR, and in particular to the ABRI
faction, during the 1978 MPR session. The theme of this letter was
that ABRI, with its decisive position within the MPR, should make up
a program to implement the basics of the Constitution gradually.
Nasution referred to three specific areas. To begin with, he called
for the implementation of Article I of the Constitution. Sovereignty
was in the hands of the people, he pointed out, and this meant that
the people's representatives should be candidates from, and chosen
by, the people. In reality, he noted, only 39 percent of the MPR
members were elected. In making this point, the former army com-
mander drew attention to the fact that his proposal in the 1950s to
return to the 1945 Constitution had been accompanied by a call for
general elections to be held on a district, not a proportional basis,
with one member being returned by each district. Under such a
scheme, it would be possible for nonactive or retired ABRI members
to stand as candidates.14
Secondly, he called for the implementation of Articles 27-34 of
the Constitution, dealing with the basic rights and duties of citizens.
These included freedom of expression, of meeting, and of forming as-
sociations. In 1966-68, he noted, the MPRS had, in fact, drawn up a
bill dealing with this topic, but this work had not been continued by
the MPR of 1973 or 1978. The MPRS of 1968 had been unable to fin-
ish its work on the hak-hak azasi (basic rights), Nasution says, be-
cause the fraksi Golkar refused to participate. (This is not entirely
correct. Muslim opposition to provisions concerning the freedom to
change religion was an important factor in the bill being shelved.)
Thirdly, he called for the abolition of the extraconstitutional
powers vested in the president and the commander of Kopkamtib; if
there were a need for emergency rule, he said, it could be provided
for under Article 12 of the Constitution, which gives the president
13.	Interview with General Nasution, June 17, 1980.
14.	The 1969 Election Law, Nasution pointed out on a later occasion,
had been drawn up at the behest of MPRS Decree No. XI; this stipu-
lated that the MPR and the DPR must be produced by elections held
in accordance with the sovereignty of the people. General Nasution
made this point in a written communication dated November 14, 1981.213
the right to proclaim martial law. All state regulations should be de-
rived from the Constitution; however, there were still laws and regu-
lations that were improper and deviated from it. Moreover, there
were also Penpres (presidential decisions) which did not accord with
the Constitution, one of these being the Subversion Law dating from
the Old Order. Not directly referred to in the note to the MPR, but
of continuing concern to Nasution, was the program, dating from the
time of the Hatta Cabinet of 1948, for the existing professional army
system to be gradually transformed into a people's army system,
where ABRI would serve as the kernel, as specified under Article 30
of the Constitution.15
If these proposals were implemented, Nasution argued, ABRI
members could still be chosen as members of Parliament and sit in the
MPR as representatives of the armed forces, as provided under Arti-
cle 2 of the Constitution. And with the implementation of Article 1
and Articles 27-34 dealing with civil rights, Nasution reasoned, de-
mocracy would be established and parties would develop. The TNI's
role would be to defend the state and to take care of deviations from
the Constitution. This, he noted, had been the standpoint since
1945—that the Constitution was the foundation and policy of the
army. Nasution felt it would be unrealistic to expect the government
to introduce all the proposed reforms at once. But, he argued, a
start should be made. Accordingly, his 1978 note to the MPR asked
for a program in stages to implement the fundamental principles of the
Constitution. He also argued that the MPR should once again be
given the formal power to decide the aims and objectives of state
policy.
This blend of idealism and realism was characteristic of
Nasution's approach. Although he wished to see the nation return to
the constitutional path, he had no illusions about the obstacles that
stood in the way of this goal. In the final analysis, he recognized,
everything depended on the political will of the president, and he saw
little to justify optimism that change was imminent. Nasution is fond
of pointing out that the third army seminar of 1972 concluded that it
was necessary for the '45 Generation, and in particular those holding
positions of authority, to purify and correct themselves in order to
guarantee the continuation of the '"45 struggle." (Nasution was
among those who put purification as a sine qua non, because, in his
opinion, there had been considerable "ideological erosion" within the
ranks of the '45 Generation, with the result that the new generation,
military as well as civilian, was not being given the sort of example
they needed.)
However, the implementation of purification, which means
the establishment of a clean government, the pure and
consistent implementation of the Constitution, the estab-
lishment of the rule of law, the implementation of the
15. Interview with General Nasution, 1979.214
people’s army system, and so on all depend on the politi-
cal will of the president. And since 1972 I have not seen
any consistent effort to execute the objectives of the
third army seminar, which in reality is nothing but the
outlining of the follow-up of the second army seminar of
1966 in which the army formulated the guidelines for im-
plementing the New Order as a "total correction" based on
mental attitude and covering social, political, economic,
and cultural fields.16
The constitutional thread that ran through all of Nasution's ut-
terances found periodic expression in the Indonesian press. In a let-
ter to Tempo in June 1979, the former defense minister congratulated
General Sumitro for his initiative in publicly and responsibly discuss-
ing matters which had been regarded as taboo, "like the matter of
'succession1, which should have been an ordinary matter in constitu-
tional life and which, in fact, is the right and duty of every citizen
to discuss."17 He conceded, however, that it was not just the
present leadership that had made this a sensitive subject. "In the
Old Order, for example, you would be subject to the Presidential Di-
rective on Subversion when you talked about the matter." In the let-
ter, Nasution also referred to the failure of the MPRS in 1968 to
approve a draft of "constitutional rules of the game," owing to the
lack of cooperation from the ABRI and functional faction. "I believe
that on the basis of experience with past upheavals, without constitu-
tional rules of the game, it will be like a game of soccer where only
the side that plays roughly will score goals."18
In an article in Prisma in 1981, Nasution stressed yet again the
need for the pure and consistent implementation of the Constitution,
warning of the dangers that were inherent in the existing system.
In the future, all extra-constitutional authority and insti-
tutionalization should be ended, particularly where they
are expressly defined by the Constitution. If this is not
implemented it may lead to disharmony between the mili-
tary, other social groups, and the people. This in turn
could negate ABRI’s unity with the people and bear nega-
tively upon national defense and security. If the defini-
tion and implementation of civil participation were to be
deprived of elements of transition and emergency, as my
16.	Ibid. At the second army seminar it was stated that the "New
Order is a mental attitude, its aim is to create a social, political, eco-
nomic, and cultural life that is [spirited by] Pancasila morals, partic-
ularly a belief in Cod Almighty."
17.	Tempo, June 9, 1979. USE.
18.	Ibid.215
lecture [at] Seskoad proposed, the [scale] of this nega-
tive threat would be reduced.19
If Nasution is a firm believer in the Constitution and the need
for free and fair elections, then it is with one important caveat—he
would not permit the Communist party to participate in elections. If
the PKI had won a majority of votes in an election in the early 1960s
it would have been necessary, in Nasution’s view, for the army to
block any takeover of state power. In Nasution’s opinion, such a
takeover had been a distinct possibility. "If Aidit had not staged the
coup," he says, "the PKI would have become the majority party with
the majority in Parliament and then become the government. Sukarno
was helping them."20 The Muslims might have opposed such a devel-
opment, he concedes, but they had been very much handicapped by
the participation of many of them in the PRRI rebellion of 1958-61 ,
and the PKI leaders had Sukarno on their side. In Nasution’s view,
opposition to a Communist takeover, albeit a constitutional takeover,
would have been justified "because it's another Indonesia [they would
build]. It’s no longer the Indonesia of 1945."21 The nation had lost
so many lives in securing its independence, and the Communist ideol-
ogy was contrary to its struggles. "I am convinced that we would
[have] become a satellite of Peking or Moscow." Moreover, "as a re-
ligious man, I cannot tolerate communism." On the other hand,
Nasution says that an individual Communist or ex-Communist should
always be permitted to vote, unless he or she has been stripped of
that right by a court decision. (It is not sufficient, he believes, for
Kopkamtib to strip a person of a right guaranteed under the Consti-
tution. )
There is, clearly, an area of potential conflict here between
possibly incompatible demands of the Pancasila and the 1945 Constitu-
tion. The army is sworn to uphold the Constitution, and thus, in
theory, the principle of free elections and majority rule. But it is
also bound to defend the five principles of the Pancasila, including
the sila which emphasizes a "belief in Cod." If the army was con-
vinced that a certain political party stood in violation of this principle
(the PKI always insisted that belief was a matter for the individual),
was it justified in preventing that group from coming to power if the
group in question had the popular support necessary to do so
through elections? If one were to argue that the army was bound to
accept the will of the majority of the population, then Nasution’s
constitutionalism, which excluded a Communist party, would in prin-
ciple be no less flawed than Suharto’s, which excluded "extremists" of
both the right and the left. Nasution’s answer—and indeed the an-
swer of the officer corps as a whole—was that communism was in con-
flict with the principles of the Pancasila, and in particular with those
19.	Prisma, March 1981, p. 42.
20.	Interview with General Nasution, July 7, 1980.
21.	Ibid.216
silas dealing with belief in Cod and nationalism. Because of this, he
argued, it was neither appropriate nor possible to recognize the PKI
as a party. As Lev has noted, for many who were quite committed
otherwise to concepts of legality, ’’the Communists, revolutionary
threat that they were, stood outside the circle of acceptability.1,22
Finally, it should be noted that Nasution admits that he must
accept much of the blame for failing to make Sukarno adhere to the
Constitution prior to 1965. "We all failed, especially me,” he says.
”1 was at the top. I was his assistant. It was precisely because of
this failure, that the second army seminar formulated a doctrine which
said, inter alia, that there had been a deviation from the Constitution
during the Old Order period and a departure from the principle of
people's sovereignty:
Since the [seminar] I have always said we have to stick
to this. And they [members of the ruling group] are al-
ways going back before this. Maybe I was always against
the parties before that. But maybe the position of the
army' was not yet clear; it became clear after Gestapu
[the coup attempt]—adherence to the Constitution. So all
my criticism is about this. But they are always replying
[by talking about my actions] in the past.23
b) Nasution and the Changing interpretation of Dwifungsi
What is very much needed in the 1970s is the purification
of the meaning and the implementation of the dwifungsi
concept.
—Nasution in his last lecture at
Seskoad, 19692U
The failure to apply the Constitution in a pure and consistent
manner is closely related, in Nasution’s view, to what he sees as the
misuse by the Suharto group of the dwifungsi doctrine. When in 1957
a standing committee of the Dewan Nasional (National Council) had
formulated the concept of going back to the 1945 Constitution, he ar-
gues, it was understood that it was not just the armed forces which
had a dual function but also all other groups in society, including
workers, peasants, youth, religious teachers, and so on. A member
of any one of these owed his first duty to the state as a citizen and
his second to his group or profession. In the New Order period,
this concept was dropped, with the result that only the armed forces
22.	Daniel S. Lev, "Judicial Authority and the Struggle for an Indo-
nesian Rechtsstaat," Law and Society (Fall 1978), p. 52 (footnote).
23.	Interview, March 11 , 1982.
24.	The lecture was delivered in September 1969.217
was said to have a dual function. This dual function, Nasution ar-
gues, was materially enhanced by General Sumitro's restructuring of
the armed forces in 1969; under the new system, he says, ABRI's
kekaryaan function was elevated to a new plane.
In the past, the territorial doctrine [pembinoan wifayoh]
was the tree, and from this tree you had various branch-
es, including civic mission and kekaryaan. With the re-
structuring introduced by General Sumitro in 1969,
kekaryaan became the tree while the tree, territorial, be-
came no more than a branch. Because of this change of
structure, the territorial apparatus has become a tool of
kekaryaan.25
Under Suharto, Nasution argues, the territorial system has
been politicized and bent to the needs of the ruling group. Accord-
ing to its doctrine, the army is above all groupings. However, since
1969 territorial officers have come under the control of the chief of
staff for functional affairs (Kaskar Hankam) and become a tool of
kekaryaan. Kekaryaan has, in turn, become a tool of Golkar. If the
territorial apparatus had remained the trunk of the tree, then ABRI
would indeed be at one with the people. But with kekaryaan as the
tree, territorial officers are obliged to ensure that Golkar wins each
election. A military bupati might, in theory, be answerable to the
provincial governor and the Department of Home Affairs. In practice,
he has to follow the dictates of the local Korem commander. Likewise,
a military governor is obliged to follow the guidelines laid down by
the local military commander, the latter being the chairman of the
Dewan Kekaryaan. The territorial branch should be at one with the
people, Nasution argues, but under Suharto it is being used in the
most partisan fashion; it is working not for the people but for the
ruling group. There are dangers too in the nonpolitical field, he
feels. When farmers are unable to repay their loans under the Bimas
rice intensification project, territorial officers are sent to recover the
debt. This practice, so reminiscent of the operations of the colonial-
ist army, is, in Nasution's view, opposed to the whole concept of ter-
ritorial defense and ABRI-people unity.
At the same time, Nasution argues that the emergency powers
conferred on the army leadership as a result of the birth of
Kopkamtib on October 2,	1965, not only considerably enhance the
power of the army leaders but extend downwards and outwards to the
laksus-laksus (pelaksana khusus, or special executors of Kopkamtib)
in the provinces. Amongst other things, he notes, Kopkamtib and its
provincial agencies have had responsibility for screening candidates
for the general elections, administering the post-1977 antigraft opera-
tion (Opstib), checking on the prices of essential commodities, and
providing permits for religious meetings. This army power has been
further enhanced, he suggests, by the formation of a Muspida in each
25. General Nasution in written communication, November 14, 1981.218
province. The Muspida, which consists of the panglima (military com-
mander), the governor, the police chief, and the local representative
of the Attorney General's Office, amongst others, is chaired by the
panglima in his capacity as Laksusda (regional representative of
Kopkamtib). In theory, the Muspida is only a wadah musyawarah
(consultative body). However, Nasution says that, because it brings
together all local powerholders, it is in practice the most powerful in-
stitution in the province.26
Under the Supersemar decree of March 11 , 1966, Nasution ar-
gues, the dwifungsi of the army was even further extended. As we
have seen, acting pursuant to the powers conveyed in that instruc-
tion, Suharto was twice able to change the composition of the DPR
(GR) and the MPRS en masse in the years 1966 and 1968. As a re-
sult of the exercise of this emergency power, Nasution argues, the
government has been able to stifle many fundamental rights of the In-
donesian people. For example, Article 28 of the Constitution guaran-
tees the freedom to unite and assemble, to express one's opinions
both verbally and in writing. But no attempt has been made to pro-
duce even a bill on this subject. Constitutional regulations are very
necessary in building the life of the state and ensuring equality of
law and justice. Yet up till now, only the commander of Kopkamtib
can regulate these matters, meaning that they fall within ABRI's
jurisdiction. At the same time, there are regulations from the period
of the Old Order which, although formally treated as laws, are not in
accordance with the 1945 Constitution. This was the case with the
law (No. 11/PNPS/1963) regarding subversion, until the introduction
of a new law on this matter in 1982.
In practice, any decision regarding the exercise of the
said political rights is in the hands of the Pangkopkamtib
or the police and so it is felt that the authority of regu-
lating politics is in the hands of ABRI officials. This sit-
uation is not in accordance with the 1945 Constitution
and, although these sorts of things are supposed to be
dual functional, in reality that is not the case. That is
why in my last lecture at Seskoad in 1969 I said that
what was very much needed for the seventies was the
26. Ibid. The panglima was always chairman of the Muspida, even if
he was a two-star officer and the governor a three-star. The ration-
ale was that the governor, being in a kekaryaan role, was not on the
active list. Thus, when Maj. Cen. Witarmin was panglima Kodam VIII
Brawijaya (East Java), he chaired the Muspida, even though the gov-
ernor, Lt. Cen. Sunandar Prijosudarmo, was more senior in rank.
The same situation existed in Jakarta at the time when Maj. Gen. C.
H. Mantik was panglima Kodam V Jaya and Lt. Cen. Ali Sadikin was
governor, although in that case Sadikin was, of course, a Marine
Corps officer.219
purification of the meaning of the dwifungsi concept and
its implementation.27
In the period since he held office as chairman of the MPRS,
Nasution has been proposing that the People’s Congress establish the
limits of ABRI’s involvement in society under the dual function doc-
trine: "I have proposed that every five years the MPR should deter-
mine the guidelines of ABRI’s involvement in civilian functions so that
in effect the people remain truly sovereign.”28 This, of course, was
hardly the sort of suggestion that was likely to commend itself to the
Suharto government.
Because of the way the system has been structured, Nasution
sees no real prospects for political change via the electoral process so
long as Suharto is president. The general elections in 1982 and the
presidential elections in 1983, would, he correctly predicted, simply
repeat the pattern that was established in 1971-72 and 1977-78. The
general election system, plus the large percentage of appointees in
the MPR/DPR, lead him to the conclusion that Article 1 of the Consti-
tution has not been applied consistently. Because there is no true
social control, he feels, opportunities exist for those in authority to
manipulate their powers. To illustrate this point, Nasution cites the
process relating to the nomination of the president. This, he main-
tains, is virtually in the hands of the leadership of the five fraksi
within the MPR, including the ABRI, Golkar, and provincial delegates'
groupings "where the leadership is with the president himself.”
Moreover, as it has become the practice for the political party leaders
to state during the campaign that they all support the same candidate
for president, the results of the presidential elections are known even
before the general elections are held. When, in the 1978 MPR ses-
sion, the PPP fraksi decided that more than one presidential candidate
should be nominated (in order for voting to take place), the move
was thwarted by the party presidency, namely Idham Chalid and his
colleagues.
27.	Nasution interview, June 17, 1980. As we have seen, another
prominent retired general (and former Kopkamtib commander),
Sumitro, shared the view that Kopkamtib should be disbanded.
Sumitro says he first urged Suharto to dissolve the body in 1971.
The continuing existence of Kopkamtib a decade and a half after the
emergency situation that led to its birth has been a matter of peren-
nial complaint with student groups. As suggested elsewhere in this
monograph, Suharto may have retained the body not only because of
its convenience but also—and perhaps more importantly—because it
was an integral part of the artfully balanced command structure he
had erected over the years; the disappearance of Kopkamtib would
have upset the harmonious balance he sought between subordinate of-
ficers.
28.	Prisma, March 1981, p. 43.220
As a matter of practical politics, Nasution concludes, it is not
possible to choose a candidate other than the ruling president. The
presidential appointment of a large number of DPR members is similar,
he argues, to the system in South Korea under President Park Chung
Hee and the system in Spain under General Franco: 111n colonial times
we also found it in several places outside Java where village heads
were chosen by giving more than 20 percent more votes to the son of
the person to be replaced for the sake of stability and continuity."29
By and large, Nasution maintains, the formation and working
pattern of representative institutions and political groupings in Indo-
nesia is oriented to the political system as it existed in 1966. How-
ever, the situation at that time was one of emergency and one that
had a transitional character. This "authority system" has ensured its
own stability through both the electoral arrangements and the ap-
pointment of a very large percentage of the DPR and MPR members.
Because of this, Suharto's position has become entrenched. This
state of affairs not only allows for a situation of executive domination
but creates a "political dependency" on the part of DPR and MPR
members. As a result, Nasution maintains, the nation is faced with a
lower house which has merely a "responsive character," and is unable
to take much initiative. The ruling group is not only in a position to
screen candidates, he argues, but is able, because of its links with
amenable party leaders, to have troublesome representatives recalled
at any time. A revision is needed to bring back the equilibrium en-
visaged by the Constitution. The electoral process makes possible, in
theory at any rate, a dynamic and self-renewing system. However,
because the political rights of the candidates are circumscribed and
the majority of the MPR members are mere appointees, the "represen-
tative" bodies are in fact no more than subsystems of an entity domi-
nated by the executive in general and the president in particular.
Nasution, as we have seen, has been at pains to emphasize that
the official doctrine of the armed forces is that the Constitution is the
basis and policy of the armed forces. (Suharto stressed precisely the
same point and indicated that he was prepared, if necessary, to "use
weapons" to defend the Constitution. The difference between the two
men was that, while Nasution was saying he was now prepared to
trust the people, Suharto, more "pragmatic" and aware of the implica-
tions of such a move, was content with constitutional form rather than
substance.) Nasution does not expect Suharto to change his mind on
this issue, but he does see some grounds for optimism in the future.
Because since its birth ABRI has been indoctrinated to defend the
1945 Constitution, "I feel certain that it can't be involved in continu-
ously ignoring important sections of the Constitution, like the sections
dealing with people's sovereignty, citizen's rights and so on, as we
have experienced during the former regime."30
29.	Interview with General Nasution, June 17, 1980.
30.	Ibid.221
While Nasution makes a cogent and closely argued analysis of
the constitutional shortcomings of New Order rule, there is a certain
irony in the fact that it has fallen on him to detail these excesses.
Nasution argued throughout the 1950s for a strong and vigorous
presidential system and urged that the army be given a generous say
in the decision-making process. Now he is in opposition to what has
become, in effect, a self-perpetuating presidency, a presidency,
moreover, that is dominated by a retired army officer making full use
of the doctrines bequeathed to him by Nasution. In short, as he now
readily enough concedes, Nasution failed to spell out the acceptable
limits to military involvement in society. But, whether, had he done
so, this would have altered the subsequent course of events greatly
is very much open to question.
c) Above AH Croups: The Army in the Electoral Process
The government may change every day; the army remains
the same.
—General Sudirman, 194731
. . . the only national property that is still whole and
unchanging notwithstanding all sorts of challenges and
changes is the Indonesian National Army.
—General Sudirman, 194932
It would have been difficult to find two Indonesian nationalist
leaders as different in training and temperament as the 1945-50 Com-
mander-in-Chief, General Sudirman, and his 1948-49 deputy, Colonel
Nasution, and relations between them were not always smooth. How-
ever, while the two men frequently clashed on military matters,
Nasution tended to defer to Sudirman when it came to politics, con-
ceding that the commander was ’’more mature" in this field.33 Later,
31.	According to Nasution, Sudirman had stressed this line "since
the early days of the TNI." (Written communication, November 14,
1981.) In an interview, Nasution said the phrase "ganti setiap hari"
was first used by Sudirman in about 1947.
32.	Quoted in Nasution, Sekitar Perang Kemerdekaan Indonesia, 2:
349.
33.	Interview with General Nasution, November 10, 1981. In many
ways the direct antithesis of Sudirman, Nasution was a Dutch-
educated military professional, an Outer Islander committed, above
all, to the rationalization of the command system. Sudirman, a prod-
uct of Japanese military training, was Javanese, with a deep mystical
streak. As McKemmish has observed,222
after Sudirman's death in 1950, Nasution took over many of Sudir-
man's concepts about the army’s role in society and, as his own po-
litical thinking developed, fashioned them into the ’’Middle Way"
doctrine of 1958.
Nasution, as we have seen, had been the one who publicized
Sudirman’s hak milik nosional letter to Sukarno in his book TNI, pub-
lished in 1953. (See above Ch. 3, n. 1.) In later years, it became
customary for senior army officers to refer to this statement when ad-
Sudirman's precepts and sense of morality stemmed from
the traditions of the wayang, the sofr/o-warrior and
Javanese mysticism; Nasution's from the harsher, less tol-
erant, more legalistic tradition of Islam as practiced in
North Sumatra, reinforced by his training under the
Dutch, and quite alien to the Javanese experience.
(McKemmish, "Political Biography of Nasution," p. 26.)
When, on November 12, 1945, an all-Java meeting of TKR commanders
had met to elect a leader, Nasution favored the election of Urip
Sumohardjo, a former KNIL major. He was deeply disappointed when
Urip lost out to Sudirman.
Nasution admits that at various times there was "some friction"
in his relationship with Sudirman. On one occasion, Nasution, as
commander of the Siliwangi, had felt it necessary to take action
against some of the troops under his command; the troops had then
complained to Sudirman. On another occasion, Nasution had criticized
Sudirman's headquarters because it did not have an overall strategy,
leaving each front to take its own initiative; when Nasution personally
submitted a concept for an overall strategy, there was no response
from Sudirman. In 1948, when the Hatta cabinet was pushing
through its plans to rationalize and restructure the TNI, there were
further differences of opinion between the two men. This was due in
large part to the fact that Sudirman remained neutral when the PKI,
which was opposed to the Hatta cabinet, launched a stinging attack
on both the Siliwangi and its commander. Despite these frictions,
Nasution says he was never admonished by Sudirman and the two men
were able to maintain good relations; Sudirman’s ADC, Major (later
Lt. Genera,) Suprapto, and his former ADC, Colonel (later Brig.
Gen.) Abimanju, were also persona, friends of Nasution and took care
that the relationship between the two men was not destroyed.
These differences of opinion ended after the Madiun affair.
Sudirman, who had succumbed to illness, turned the leadership of the
headquarters over to Nasution. With free rein to act, Nasution was
able to push through the reorganization that he had always wanted.
In the guerrilla period that followed the Second Dutch "Police Action"
of December 1948, Nasution was able to carry out his duties as com-
mander of the Java Command without intervention from Sudirman.
(General Nasution, written communication, November 14, 1981.)223
dressing the question of ABRI's place in society. Nasution looked
with equal favor on Sudirman's dictum about the army remaining con-
stant as governments came and went. Whenever there were political
problems in Yogyakarta during the revolution, Nasution says, Sudir-
man had always emphasized that the government could change every
day because that was the political system. '’But11 Sudirman had
added, ’’the army cannot change."3i+
This was, as Nasution is prepared to concede, a fairly embry-
onic formulation of the army’s role in society. And it was one that
did not necessarily make allowance for the sort of political role that
Nasution would later seek to establish and legitimize. Nevertheless,
for him it captures the essentials of his preferred relationship be-
tween army and government. Sudirman had said that the army always
remained the same, and in his speeches in the 1950s Nasution some-
times added a line of his own at the end of Sudirman’s formula-
tion—"dan rakyat adalah tetap rakyat" (’’and the people remain the
people”).35 For Nasution, the army and the people were constant
and unchanging, a lesson that had been driven home in December
1948 when, as he saw it, the government had ’’surrendered," and the
army and the people had gone on fighting.36 In Nasution's view, the
most important components were the tentara (army) and the rakyat,
not the pemerintah (government). In later years, however, this had
changed. "Since Yani, it is pemerintah and tentara. Together! It
is like the Shah of Iran. Not strong!"37 The Shah had built his
government on the power of the army but, as events were to show,
that "power" was illusory.
Sudirman, of course, had not had to address the question of
the TNI’s role during an election campaign. But he did have to deal
with a situation in which political groups were trying to influence the
army, or at least some parts of it. His attitude was that the TNI
should not allow itself to be the tool of any one group in society; the
TNI was an instrument of the nation. In Nasution’s view, it was log-
ical that the army should, in any election, adhere to the Sudirman
doctrine that the army remain independent of contending political fac-
tions.
During his time as chief of staff, Nasution had gone to some
lengths to keep the army from backing one or another of the political
34.	Interview with General Nasution.
35.	Nasution, written communication, November 14, 1981.
36.	He wrote: "In Indonesia, the people and the armed forces to-
gether were able to maintain effective security following the disband-
ment of the government by the enemy on December 19, 1948. Yugo-
slavia fared similarly well during the Second World War." See A. H.
Nasution, "The Dual Function of ABRI: Origins and Current Situa-
tion," Prisma (March 1981), pp. 38-39.
37.	Interview with General Nasution, July 24, 1981.224
parties (indeed, he had spent a good deal of his time criticizing the
practices of the various parties), and although he had played a key
role in the formation of Golkar in 1964, he had no time for the view
that the army, being so closely identified with Golkar, should lend
the organization its support during an election.38 The army seminars
in 1966 and 1972, he liked to point out, had reaffirmed that ABRI
must be above all political groupings. However, due to a lack of
consistency in implementing the formulations of those seminars, "a
sort of cold war” had come into existence. During the 1977 general
election campaign, Nasution issued a press statement reminding ABRI
to stand above all groups and not to side with any contestant, be-
cause that would involve a deviation from Sudirman’s last message.
In this, his thinking appeared to be very much in line with that re-
flected in the public statements of active officers like Jusuf.
d) The Obsession with Security and National Development
Beyond his anxieties regarding the Constitution, the dwifungsi
and the need for ABRI to remain above all groups, Nasution is also
concerned that the Suharto government is concentrating "almost en-
tirely" on the issues of security and economic growth. Because of
this "onesidedness," it is, he believes, postponing the solution of
fundamental social problems. As he sees it, attention should be fo-
cused on education ("the main investment for development"), on the
building of a social and political system based on the Constitution,
and on economic growth—in that order. Linder the current govern-
ment, he argues, the gap is widening between rich and poor, between
town and country, between the center and the regions and between
the elites and the masses—a line of argument almost identical to those
of Alamsjah in his 1977 Menado speech. There has been an erosion of
national and social discipline, a misuse of power among officialdom,
and a very great increase in corruption. The government's excessive
concern with security, he feels, is manifested in the apparent "Is-
lam-phobia" of the ruling group, its predisposition to find evidence of
an "anti-Pancasila" attitude in even the most moderate expression of
dissent. There is not one Islamic organization that is not committed
to upholding the Constitution, he contends, but still the government
38. The Joint Secretariat of Golkar had not been created directly by
ABRI but by Nasution in his capacity as vice chairman of the National
Front. The front was headed by Sukarno; Nasution, as vice chair-
man, represented the armed forces and unaffiliated organizations.
There had been an attempt, at the initiative of the Supreme Advisory
Council, to eliminate organizations that were not affiliated to any
party. Nasution says that to "save" these fairly strongly anti-
communist organizations, among them HMI (Islamic Student Associa-
tion), Muhammadiyah, and PCRI (Association of Indonesian Teachers),
he formed the Golkar Joint Secretariat. Written communication, No-
vember 14, 1981.225
treats Islamic groups with suspicion. The complaint in Islamic cir-
cles, he says, is not that the Constitution or the Pancasila should be
changed, but that there should be greater religious freedom; at
present, it is necessary to have a license to carry out many religious
activities, particularly dakwah (missionary work). If one listens to
the khutbah (sermons) in the mosques, one can hear complaints of too
much supervision of religious activity by the government security
services.
Here, as earlier, it is possible to see Nasution’s preoccupation
with the need to purify and correct the social and political ills he
finds around him. Although he is not unaware of the obstacles that
stand in the way of such an undertaking, he believes it is essential
for him, as both a Muslim and a nationalist, to make his views known.
There is, in his concern about corruption and moral laxity, a strong
’’Calvinist” revulsion at the ways of the new elite, at the steady ero-
sion of the ’’old" values. There is, too, the concern of a pious Mus-
lim at the obstacles placed in the path of the Muslim community and a
concern that the government's policies are once again creating a
Java-centric Indonesia. Many of these sentiments, in the view of the
ruling elite, are admirable but ’’unrealistic.”
How Far Has Nasution Himself Been Consistent?
If I followed the dictates of my heart I'd suppress all
political parties.
—Nasution, 195839
I think you better not listen to Pak Nas. He's more au-
thoritarian than anyone else. Really! He is more totali-
tarian. When he was still in office he could not stand
opposition or other ideas. Really, I tell you, he cannot
talk too much. I know him very well. People like me.
Although I respect him, because he's got his merits dur-
ing the guerrilla war. But after that he's not an example
anymore.
—General Sumitro, 19812+0
39.	Quoted in Fischer, Story of Indonesia, p. 294. Nasution says
he never (his emphasis) openly demanded the dissolution of the politi-
cal parties. Asked about this quotation, he said, "Maybe Fischer was
not thorough in writing my quotes on the parties.” (Written commu-
nication, November 14, 1981.)
40.	Interview with General Sumitro, December 12, 1981. Sumitro’s
view of Nasution may have been colored in part by personal ani-
mosity. Sumitro, it is said, felt that Nasution had not given him an226
As a 22-year-old cadet at the prewar Royal Military Academy in
Bandung, Nasution is said to have been much influenced by struc-
tures stressing power. According to Simatupang, who admittedly has
little time for Nasution, blaming him in particular for the fashioning
of a doctrine that gave the army a permanent place in the political
process, Nasution was an admirer of Baldur von Schirach, the leader
of the Hitler Youth, and sought a state in which youth was organized
and militarized. During the Japanese occupation, he was enrolled in
the Japanese-run Seinendan youth organization, which was more or
less a militarized Boy Scout movement. Like the framers of the 1945
Constitution, who started not with individual rights but with the or-
ganic entity of the state, he seemed basically hostile to notions of
"liberalism.11 On the other hand, it would be wrong to make too much
of this. (D. N. Aidit, who in 1951 became the chairman of the PKI,
had, according to Nasution, belonged to his youth organization in
1943-44 and been an admirer of Joseph Coebbels.) During the Japa-
nese occupation—and indeed for a number of years thereafter—
Nasution was not politically mature. Like many members of his gener-
ation he had been attracted and influenced by Germany’s post-1918
opportunity to have a career in the Brawijaya. Nasution’s answer
was that this had been Sukarno’s decision, not his, a statement which
may not give the full picture. According to Nasution, there were, in
the late 1950s, two "crown princes" in the Brawijaya—Sumitro and
Surachman. Surachman, he says, was a Sukarno man and Sumitro
was not. "At that time," said Nasution, "you could not make a deci-
sion about the Brawijaya panglima without Sukarno. Brawijaya meant
something special for Sukarno. I was not free. About the Siliwangi
I could make the decision myself." (Interview, March 2, 1981.) An-
derson has argued that Surachman, "an extreme right-winger, onti-
Sukarno, indeed strongly suspected of masterminding subversive
Gerakan Anti-Sukarno, Anti-PKI etc.," may in fact have been an
ideal Nasution man for that period, like the panglima of the "Three
Souths" (South Sulawesi, South Kalimantan, and South Sumatra), who
all banned the local PKI on Nasution’s prodding. Surachman, he ar-
gues, was already a lieutenant colonel in 1955 and chief of staff of
the Brawijaya and way above Sumitro, who was merely a chief of staff
of one of Kodam VIIl’s three brigades. In other words, he concludes
that there never were "two crown princes." (Written communication,
February 9, 1984.) If this is so, Nasution would seem to have had
several good and compelling reasons for appointing Surachman.
Sumitro, in discussing his relationship with Nasution, makes no men-
tion of this matter. In his view, the former army chief of staff
looked on him with disfavor because of his refusal to back the abor-
tive October 17 movement in 1952. This seems fanciful. Nasution
was a colonel in 1952 and Sumitro only a captain and the views of the
latter could hardly have counted for much. Nor is it entirely true
that Nasution had a free hand in Siliwangi appointments; as we have
seen, in 1959 Sukarno had been able to appoint Ibrahim Adjie chief of
staff of the Siliwangi, Nasution’s reservations notwithstanding.227
rise from the ashes of defeat. But he knew little about political sys-
tems in general and still less, it seems, about fascism. By his own
account, he saw history in terms of personalities and patriotism, of
heroic leaders and eventful deeds. He may not have taken issue with
the views of von Schirach, he says, but he did not look to him for
guidance. Rather, his heroes were men like Hindenburg, de Gaulle,
and Mustapha Kemal.
In later years, a number of writers were to draw attention to
what they saw as an authoritarian streak in Nasution’s political think-
ing.1+1 A number of fellow officers, Simatupang included, thought
they detected a "Bonapartist” element in his make-up. And officers
associated with the Suharto group have suggested that there is not
only a trace of sour grapes in Nasution’s criticisms but more than a
trace of hypocrisy as well. Nasution, it is said, is a man who con-
demns practices that he himself took part in while in power, when he
never hesitated to take steps which severely curtailed many of the
democratic rights he now advocates. He is the man who pioneered
the return to the 1945 Constitution, a document that greatly
strengthened the executive branch. And if the Suharto government
is in error, military leaders assert with some exasperation, then they
are doing no more than ”Pak Nas” bade them to do. If valid, these
criticisms would undermine some of Nasution’s moral authority in mak-
ing his current statements, and on this ground alone they deserve
serious study.
Nasution, perhaps more than any other postwar leader, was
very much influenced by the lack of cohesion during the revolution-
ary period, a point which has been well made by Jean Taylor: ’’Where
others have drawn edifying examples of self-sacrifice and patriotism,
Nasution has drawn conclusions of a different nature. He has seen in
the physical revolution a terrible object-lesson on the necessity for a
competent and integrated leadership and for a well thought-out na-
tional programme.”42 Where others saw a nation fired by an over-
powering sense of revolutionary spirit, Nasution saw a plethora of
pemuda struggle groups, many of them at odds with one another.
Nasution wanted to establish control over this situation, to bring co-
hesion and coordination out of the chaos.
41.	See, for example, McKemmish, "Political Biography of Nasution,”
p. 8.
42.	J. S. Taylor, "Some Indonesian Perceptions of the Revolution, A
Study in Indonesian Historiography" (MA thesis, University of Mel-
bourne, 1968), p. 109.
Anderson has pointed out that the main reason for Nasution
feeling this way was the thrashing his troops took in July 1947 from
the Dutch in their first "Police Action." This led to the abandonment
of West Java under the terms of the Renville Agreement, a big humili-
ation for him, which he blamed on poor organization. (Written com-
munication, February 9, 1984.)228
But although Nasution emphasized the relative importance of
teknik versus semangat (fighting spirit) and placed stress on disci-
pline, training, and strong and purposeful leadership—"Western” val-
ues held in contempt by many pemuda leaders—he was not in any
sense apolitical. He distrusted those like Simatupang who sought to
build an essentially Western professional army, one that was detached
from the conduct of nonmilitary activities. In part, this may have
been a reflection of Nasution’s own view that the army had a continu-
ing contribution to make in the postrevolutionary period, in part a
recognition that the army as a whole subscribed to this view and that
it would be all but impossible to restrain it from playing such a role.
In many cases, it would be pointless to sluice through the trac-
ings of contemporary history, looking for signs of ideological consis-
tency in the words and deeds of one or other of the main political ac-
tors. All too often, the central actors in a political drama may only
have been responding to developments in their immediate surround-
ings. Nasution was himself frequently merely reacting to events,
with his most important objective doubtlessly to enhance his own
power or position and exclude from decision making those he consid-
ered rivals. However, it is also possible to detect a good deal of
consistency in Nasution’s positions over the past thirty years, to find
a thread of continuity between what he advocated in the early 1950s
and what he is advocating in the early 1980s.
Nasution and the Political Parties
During the revolution, Nasution was persistently at odds with
civilian party politicians, and he clashed with them often, largely be-
cause the troops affiliated with particular political organizations were
often unwilling to obey commands from the central army leadership.
The parties had reciprocated by attacking Nasution through political
channels. This dissension continued even during the period of
Nasution’s close cooperation with the Hatta Cabinet of 1948-49 over its
plans to reorganize and rationalize the armed forces. While serving
as army chief of staff from 1950 to 1952, Nasution continued to skir-
mish with political party leaders, who, in his opinion, wanted to go
too far in interfering with the TNI and its security operations. He
was, in any case, rather ill-disposed (sentimen) towards many of the
political party representatives in Parliament, arguing in the period
before the 1955 elections that two-thirds of them were representatives
of the puppet states created by the Dutch and led by people whom
the Republicans viewed as ’’traitors” and "collaborators.”^3 Nasution
wanted to rid the parties of those elements who had collaborated with
the Dutch against the Republic.
For Nasution, one of the most important lessons of the revolu-
tionary years had been the overwhelming need for strong and pur-
43. Written communication, November 14, 1981.229
poseful leadership, not just in the army but in the nation as a whole.
Another lesson—and one that had been driven home by the civilian
government’s surrender to the Dutch in December 1948—was that the
armed forces had a right and a duty to play a role in nonmilitary
matters. The lesson Nasution had learned from the abortive October
17 Affair of 1952 was that, while the army was entitled to play an im-
portant role in the decision-making process, its efforts to secure such
a role should not be advanced through nonconstitutional means.
In the period 1950-52, Nasution was, by his own admission,
"politically naive."44 However, during the three years of enforced
retirement that followed there was a significant development of his
views. The main shoots of Nasution’s political thought—a belief in
strong government, constitutionalism, and army participation in deci-
sion making—had been evident at the time of his dismissal as chief of
staff in 1952. By the time of his reappointment in 1955, these shoots
were developing into a cogent and coherently argued philosophy, one
that was built around a return to the 1945 Constitution and the need
for a close and continuing military involvement in nonmilitary affairs.
In formulating these doctrines, which would find expression in such
statements as the "Middle Way” speech of 1958, Nasution owed much
to the late Professor Djokosutono, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the
University of Indonesia and professor of constitutional law at that in-
stitution. Nasution had first become acquainted with Djokosutono in
1951 when, as army chief of staff, he had established the Military
Law Academy. In subsequent years, Nasution frequently exchanged
views with the professor, a man regarded as one of the foremost In-
donesian authorities on government.1+5 Djokosutono was very preoc-
cupied with the idea of ordering the political dynamics, in ordering
both the people and the army. In this regard, he provided much of
the theoretical framework for Guided Democracy.
After 1952, according to Susan McKemmish, the army chief of
staff, began openly to reject a parliamentary and liberal democratic
system in which the army had no stake. "His ideas after 1952 appear
to have changed dramatically.1,1+6 In this period, she notes, Nasution
was developing a comprehensive critique of the existing
system of government in Indonesia. Foremost among his
targets were the political parties. Since 1950, he
claimed, no thorough and consistent defense and military
policy had ever been formulated, with serious conse-
quences for the armed forces. With such an unstable
system of government and the changes in direction
brought about by the frequent cabinet changes, it was
impossible to pursue any consistent policy.47
44.	Quoted in McKemmish, "Political Biography of Nasution," p. 85.
45.	Written communication, November 14, 1981.
46.	McKemmish, "Political Biography of Nasution," p. 86.
47.	Ibid., p. 90.230
Indeed, in his view, stable government was not possible under
the existing parliamentary system. "Because of this," he wrote in
1956, "personally I feel it would be better if we returned to the orig-
inal Constitution of the 1945 Proclamation.1,48 The role of the army
was to protect and support the national struggle, based on the ideals
of the 1945 Constitution and Pancasila.
As Nasution saw it, the Republic had abandoned the 1945 Con-
stitution due to "the politics of compromise" with the Dutch,49 and it
was necessary, on this ground alone, to return to this original Con-
stitution. There were, however, two additional reasons for such a
return. First, the 1945 Constitution guaranteed secure and stable
government for a period of five years. Second, Article 2 of the 1945
Constitution could be interpreted as providing for representation of
functional groups, thus giving the army a permanent place in policy
making as distinct from the temporary authority vested in it under
the martial law decrees. (As Lev has pointed out, this was a some-
what specious argument. For neither in 1945, when a kind of func-
tional group concept was first introduced, nor in 1957, when Sukarno
revived the concept, were the armed forces considered a functional
group.)50 Later, after the outbreak of the PRRI-Permesta rebellion,
Nasution found another reason to justify a "return to 1945." With the
original Constitution, he argued, the government would be able to call
on members of the PRRI to return to the lap of the Republic, to re-
unite with all ’45 fighters. In 1962, after the conclusion of opera-
tions against the PRRI and the Darul Islam, Nasution, by now minis-
ter of defense, made the point that there would not have been such
an extensive revolt if from the beginning the government had upheld
constitutional life; because the Constitution had not been upheld,
provinces and groups had felt it necessary to resort to the use of
force.51
During his three years in retirement, Nasution's formulation of
the army’s role in society acquired a depth and maturity it had previ-
ously lacked. By 1955 he was calling not only for a return to the
1945 Constitution but forcefully advocating the view that the military
had a role to play, not just in implementing state policy but in shap-
ing it as well. In an article in Pedoman in June 1955, four months
48.	A. H. Nasution, "Bahan-Bahan Cuna Menjelaraskan Pribadi TNI
Kepada Pribadi 1945 (1956), quoted in Ibid., p. 91. Nasution had
first suggested the idea of a return to the 1945 Constitution in his
writings in 1952-55 and had become a firm exponent of the idea by
the time of the 1955 elections.
49.	Nasution, written communication, November 14, 1981.
50.	See Daniel S. Lev, The Transition to Guided Democracy: Indone-
sian Politics, 1957-1959 (Ithaca: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project,
1966), pp. 224-25.
51.	Nasution, written communication, November 14, 1981.231
before his reappointment as army chief of staff, Nasution wrote that
the army was not simply a dead instrument of the state but ”an in-
strument of state which lives as a national army, whose members are
citizens, whose ideology is the State Constitution." The army was
not a "political” body but one which implemented government policy.
However it should share in deciding that policy.52 Nasution ex-
panded on these themes when, several months later, Sukarno asked
him to write his Order of the Day speech for Armed Forces Day, Oc-
tober 5. In this speech, Nasution stressed that "the ideology of the
Armed Forces is the State Constitution" reiterating that "the Armed
Forces are not dead instruments of state."53
In 1958, three years after he had been reappointed army chief
of staff, Nasution delivered his most important speech on the TNI’s
role in society, arguing that the position of the TNI was not like that
of an army in a Western country, in which the military was solely an
"instrument of the government" (atat pemerintah), neither was it like
that of various Latin American armies which monopolized political
power. Rather, the TNI was one of the forces of the people’s
struggle which was at the same level and which fought shoulder to
shoulder with other forces, such as parties.54
Nasution's concerns had always transcended that which was
purely military. Now, he emerged as a military theoretician who was
to have a decisive influence on the political contours of post-
independence Indonesia. His enthusiastic support for the return to
the 1945 Constitution (together with the fear in certain circles that
the army might be preparing to seize power) paved the way for the
sort of strong government he favored. His concept of the dwifungsi
and the related notion that the military should pursue a "Middle Way"
provided both a framework for and a legitimization of a substantial
military role in society.
Nasution does not dispute that as Penguosa Perang (martial law
authority holder) he often took actions against the press and political
parties. However, he makes three points about such actions. First,
he stresses that they occurred during periods of revolt or at the be-
ginning of such periods. Second, he argues that all his actions were
taken under the emergency law provisions in the Constitution. Final-
ly, he makes the point that it would be wrong to see all of his ac-
tions at this time as stemming from his own initiative; in many cases,
he says, actions were taken at the behest of the government of the
day, whether it was the prime minister when the 1950 Constitution
52.	A. H. Nasution, "Tentera dan Politik," Pedoman, June 29, 1955,
quoted in McKemmish, "Political Biography of Nasution," p. 92.
53.	Antara, October 5, 1955, Sukarno’s Perintah Harian (Order of
the Day), quoted in McKemmish, "Political Biography of Nasution," p.
106.
54.	As we have seen, it was Prof. Djokosutono, not Nasution, who
dubbed this "the army’s middle way." (Jalon tengah tentara.)232
was in force or the president after 1959, under the 1945 Constitu-
tion. 55
These arguments are not particularly convincing. For one
thing, it was not only during periods of incipient revolt that Nasution
acted in this way: the harshest repression was against the PKI,
which was a strong supporter of the government. For another, there
are no emergency provisions in the Constitution, except for Article
12, which provides for the proclamation of martial law, which is why
the actions of 1957 were taken under the State of War and Siege
(SOB) provisions, a nonconstitutional carry-over from colonial days.
If Nasution is prepared to admit that he frequently criticized
the political parties and took actions against them, then he steadfastly
rejects the notion that he wanted to eliminate them altogether. That
distinction, he suggests, belongs to President Sukarno. "Bung Karno
was the one who openly demanded the disbandment of the parties in
1956.” (In fact, Sukarno only "dreamed" at that time that they would
dissolve themselves. And whatever he may have said in the mid-
1950s, he strongly supported them in 1960 against those who wanted
to absorb them into the National Front.) It is true, Nasution says,
that he often criticized party practices. But he says he never ques-
tioned their right to exist. What he had emphasized was "putting in
order," not disbandment.56
It may be true, as critics sometimes suggest, that Nasution dis-
played "Bonapartist" tendencies during his formative years at the Mil-
itary Academy in Bandung. It is certainly true that he emerged from
the revolution with a firm belief in the need for strong government
and for the exercise of military influence in the nonmilitary sector.
It is also clear that, as chief of staff of the army in the late 1950s,
he did much to advance both these objectives. The return to the
1945 Constitution conferred enormous powers on the president and the
Middle Way doctrine legitimized a continuing army involvement in so-
ciety, an involvement that was expanding rapidly as a result of three
factors—Nasution's takeover of Dutch enterprises in 1957-58 under
the SOB provisions, takeovers which provided the lifeblood for the
army in 1959-65; the PRPJ-Permesta rebellion; and the declaration of
Martial Law.
It is impossible to know what sort of political format Nasution
might have chosen had he, rather than Suharto, come to power, and
in fact the chances of that happening were always fairly remote,
Nasution having been outmanoeuvered by Sukarno in 1962 and
stripped at that time of much of his strength. From 1955 to 1962, it
is true, Nasution presided over an army that was growing more pow-
erful by the day and this has made his critics (not least those around
Suharto) cynical about his calls for political restraint by the armed
forces. That expansion was legitimate for a number of reasons,
55.	Written communication, November 14, 1981.
56.	Ibid.233
Nasution argues, not least because it was taken to offset the growing
power of the PKI. But, he says, there was no justification for the
still greater expansion of the army's role that took place after 1965.
Nasution's stated desire for the pure and consistent application
of the 1945 Constitution appears to be quite genuine, the only excep-
tion he would make to a rule about free expression being that there
should be no "anti-Pancasila" parties.
Meanwhile, the former defense minister's desire to see a more
rule-based system is reinforced by several other factors. For one
thing, Nasution has become a member of an out-group and out-groups
traditionally, and quite naturally, stress the rights that are their due
under the formal rules. Second, he is an Outer Islander, and those
from outside Java have traditionally emphasized the need for strict
adherence to rules that allow them to maintain their position vis-a-vis
Java. Finally, Nasution has moved closer of late to student and
middle-class groups in Jakarta and Bandung, and concern with the
observation of laws and procedures is something very dear to the
hearts of people in these groups.57
57. I am indebted to Professor Daniel Lev for making this point.
For an exposition of this argument see Lev, "Judicial Authority and
the Struggle for an Indonesian Rechtsstaat."CHAPTER ELEVEN
CRITICS AND CRITICISM ANALYZED
Now we have stability. Even if you say we have no de-
mocracy, it’s all right [because] we have stability. And
the most important thing is that development can take
place.
Admiral Sudomo, 19831
The Retired "Seniors11: A Profile
What is most striking about the officers who were so critical of
Suharto is their age. This was, almost by definition, a movement of
middle-aged or old men. In 1980, the retired senior officers associat-
ed with Fosko and the LKB (see Table VI) ranged in age from Air
Vice Marshal, Suyitno Sukirno (who was 50) to Rear Admiral Nazir
(who was 70). Fifteen of the twenty whose ages we have identified
were between 55 and 64. There were two reasons for this. First, it
was important, given the deference shown to age and authority in In-
donesia, that Suharto's challengers should be of his own age and
rank. The officers who joined bodies like Fosko and the LKB had al,
participated in the independence struggle and had had long and in
many cases distinguished careers. They felt they had not just a
right but a duty to draw attention to what they saw as the shortcom-
ings of a military-backed government, the more so in that those in
power were in many cases their former subordinates. Second, it
would have been impractical, given Suharto's tight control over the
system, for younger and/or active officers to have participated in
such a movement; any such involvement would have proved suicidal in
career terms.
A second feature of this group is that, while much of the initial
reforming drive had come from retired army officers, the inclusion of
retired officers from the navy, the marines, the air force, and the
police lent an appropriate multiservice coloring to the criticisms that
were being made.2 There were two officers of flag rank from the
1.	Interview with Admiral Sudomo, August 6, 1983.
2.	The army had always been politically more active than the other
services, the "Seventeenth of October Affair" being but one manifes-
tation of its determination to play a political role. It was the army
chief of staff (Nasution) who had introduced the dwifungsi concept
234235
navy (Rear Admiral Nazir and Rear Admiral Kamal), two from the
marine corps (Lt. Gen. Ali Sadikin and Brig. Gen. J. J. Sahulata),
one from the air force (Air Vice Marshall Suyitno Sukirno), and one
from the police (General Hugeng). These six nonarmy officers are of
some interest. For one thing, none of them had ever been particu-
larly close to Suharto. Nazir, one of the founders of the navy, had
stood down as navy chief of staff in 1949 when Suharto was still a
lieutenant colonel. Kamal had been very Cose to Nasution and had
served in a senior staff position when Nasution was chief of staff of
ABRI after 1962. Air Vice Marshall Suyitno Sukirno, a former deputy
to the air force chief of staff, had been eased out very soon after
Suharto came to power. Hugeng, although appointed chief of the na-
tional police in 1968, had been pensioned off in October 1971 after
becoming too much of a thorn in the side of the ruling group. Ali
Sadikin, a Sukarno appointee whose term as governor of Jakarta had
been extended by Suharto in 1971, had been dropped, with an almost
audible sigh of relief, in 1977. In this sense, the nonarmy officers
were carry-overs from the pre-New Order period. For another thing,
they included in their ranks two men (Ali Sadikin and Hugeng) who
were prominent and well-liked and whose opinions still commanded
considerable respect.
A third feature was the fairly exalted rank and/or status of
those who participated in the movement. With the exception of
Kawilarang and one or two others who had been "frozen" at the rank
of colonel in the late 1950s, all these men were of general officer
rank. There were two four-star generals (Nasution and Hugeng),
eight lieutenant generals (not to mention a number of nonarmy offi-
cers of equivalent rank), eight major generals, and six brigadier
generals. The roll-call of the government's critics in the mid- to late
seventies included some of the most prominent names in recent Indo-
nesian military history:	Nasution, Simatupang, Djatikusumo,
Kawilarang, Mokoginta, Dharsono, Jasin, Sukendro, Kemal Idris,
Hugeng, Ali Sadikin, Nazir, and Azis Saleh. It was this fusion of
high rank and "big names" which gave the criticism of the retired of-
ficers its astringency. Civilian critics could, if they dared, loudly
criticize the government and yet have little effect. The retired "se-
niors" were different. These were men whose names still counted for
something and who had the capacity to influence to some extent the
course of events. Besides, civilians could be arrested easily, while
one had to think twice about touching a general, even a retired one.
Another characteristic, particularly of Fosko, was the prepon-
derance of officers from the Siliwangi (West Java) and Brawijaya (East
Java) military regions. The original Fosko "daily board" (consisting
of the three-man presidium plus the secretary general) reflected a
strong Siliwangi-Brawijaya configuration. Although Djatikusumo was
from neither of these divisions, Sudirman was Brawijaya, Sukendro
which sought to define and legitimize the role of the armed forces in
society.Table VI. Retired Senior Officers Critical of Suharto Government 1975-80
Name	Rank	Year of Birth	Pre-military Education	Ethnic Background	Divisional/ Service Affil.	Religion
1. FOSKO						
Djatikusumo	LG	1917	Technical High School	C. Javanese	—	Muslim
Sudirman	LG	1913	Teachers High School	E. Javanese	BRA	Muslim
Sukendro*	MG	1923	Senior High School	C. Javanese	SIL	Muslim
Dharsono	LG	1925	Instit. of Technology	C. Javanese	SIL	Muslim
Mokoginta**	LG	1921	Senior High School	Gorontaloan	SIL	Muslim
Daan Jahja	BG	N.A.	Medical student	Minangkabau	SIL	Muslim
Jasin	LG	1921	High School	E. Javanese	BRA	Muslim
Agus Prasmono	BG	N.A.	N.A.	E. Javanese	BRA	
Munadi	MG	1923	Junior High School	C. Javanese	DIP	Muslim
Iskandar Ranuwihardjo	MG	N.A.	N.A.	C. Javanese	DIP	Muslim
Brotosewoyo	MG	N.A.	N.A.	C. Javanese	DIP	Muslim
Broto Hamidjojo	BG	N.A.	N.A.	C. Javanese	DIP	Muslim
Sugih Arto	LG	1923	N.A.	C. Javanese	SIL	Muslim
Muamil Effendy***	MG	N.A.	N.A.	C. Javanese	DIP	Muslim
Kawilarang	Col	1920	Senior High School	Menadonese	SIL	Christian
Chandra Hasan	Col	N.A.	N.A.	Madurese	BRA	Muslim
Harun Sohar	MG	N.A.	N.A.	S. Sumatran	SRI	Muslim
Sukanda Bratamenggala	Col	1917	Teachers' College	Sundanese	SIL	Muslim
Ishak Djuarsa	MG	1925	High School	W. Javanese	SIL	Muslim
236
* Sukendro died in 1984.
** Mokoginta was a member of both Fosko and the LKB. He died in 1984.
*** Muamil Effendy died in February 1982.
Note: Although not mentioned in Fosko membership lists, Lt. Gen. Ibnu Sutowo took an active part in the early Fosko delibera-
tions on economic matters.Table VI (continued)
Name	Rank	Year of Birth	Pre-military Education	Ethnic Background	Divisional/ Service Affil.	Religion
2. LKB						
Nasution	Gen	1918	Senior High School	Tapanuli Batak	SIL	Muslim
Azis Saleh	MG	1914	Jkt Medical Faculty	Sundanese	SIL/DIP	Muslim
Hugeng	Gen	1921		C. Javanese	Police	Muslim
Ali Sadikin	LG	1927	N.A.	Sundanese	Marines	Muslim
Nazir*	Rear Adm.	1910	N.A.	Minangkabau	Navy	Muslim
Suyitno Sukirno	Air V. Marshal	1930	Senior High School	C. Javanese	Air Force	Muslim
Isa Edris	BG	N.A.	N.A.	E. Javanese	BRA	Muslim
Hidayat Martaatmaja	LG	1916	N.A.	Sundanese	SIL	Muslim
H. M. Kamal	Rear Adm.	N.A.	N.A.	Minangkabau	Navy	Muslim
Surakhmad	Col.	N.A.	N.A.	E. Javanese	BRA	Muslim
Sahulata	BG	1920	Technical High School	Seramese	Marines	Christian
H. Sadikin	BG	1916	Mamba°ul Ilium, Solo	Sundanese	SIL	Muslim
237
* Rear Admiral Nazir died in August 1982, aged 72.
Note: Maj. Gen. Azis Saleh had been a member of both the Siliwangi and Diponegoro divisions. During the first guerrilla
period he was in the Siliwangi; during the second he was in the Diponegoro, serving as a commander of the Republican
forces in Semarang. Although very much a product of the Siliwangi, Lt. Gen. Mokoginta likewise spanned both divisions,
having served at one stage as chief of staff of the Diponegoro. Brig. Gen. Abimanju, who participated in the discus-
sions that led to the formation of Fosko, had served in each of the three big Java divisions and had commanded the
Siliwangi.238
and Dharsono from the Siliwangi. In all, no fewer than eight of the
eighteen members of Fosko were from the Siliwangi. Moreover, there
was also a strong Siliwangi '’presence” in the LKB. The founder and
most senior military member of this body, General Nasution, was the
"father of the Siliwangi" and three of its other senior military partici-
pants were from the same division. Lt. Gen. Kemal Idris, although
associated with neither Fosko nor the LKB, was also from the
Siliwangi, as was Brig. Gen. Abimanju, who, though he declined an
invitation to join Fosko, had taken part in the Brasildi meetings of
1977. All told, included in Fosko and the LKB were five of the first
nine Siliwangi commanders—Nasution (Panglima ke I), Daan Jahja (II),
H. Sadikin (IV), Kawilarang (V), and Dharsono (IX) and there would
have been six had Abimanju (Panglima III) joined them. Of the twen-
ty-five army officers identified in Table VI, almost half were from the
Siliwangi. Another six were from the Brawijaya. The Diponegoro
(Central Java) military region was somewhat underrepresented, at
least at the leadership level. Five Diponegoro officers belonged to
Fosko, but only two were of any consequence—Maj. Gen. Munadi, a
onetime assistant V (territorial) Diponegoro who had gone on to serve
as governor of Central Java between 1966-74, and Maj. Gen. Muamil
Effendy. Neither played a central role in the Fosko leadership. On
the other hand, Maj. Gen. Azis Saleh, who had spent at least part of
his career in the Diponegoro, was chairman of the LKB.
In the view of such officers as Dharsono, the disproportionate
number of Siliwangi officers was both a result of, and a protest
against, a "de-Siliwangi-ization" process instigated by Suharto.3 4
Suharto, it was argued, had tended to surround himself with trusted
colleagues from the Diponegoro, and while some retired generals,
Sukendro included, were prepared to admit that this was understand-
able, others, like Dharsono, felt strongly that this had gone hand-
in-hand with a deliberate attempt to curb the influence of the
Siliwangi.(Some in Fosko believed the ruling group had pursued a
parallel, although less drastic, policy of "de-Brawijaya-ization").5
Whatever the truth of these assertions, the lopsided influence
of the Siliwangi group was important. As has often been noted,
3.	Interview with Lt. Gen. Dharsono, November 7, 1981.
4.	Sukendro believed that this was "logical and understandable."
Interview, July 11, 1981.
5.	According to Sukendro, the "phase of de-Siliwangi-ization"
started in 1969 or 1970. Once the "de-Siliwangi-ization" had been
achieved, he said, "you feel they are trying to cut the Brawijaya."
However, the steps taken against the Brawijaya had not been as
drastic as those against the Siliwangi. In the same interview, Su-
kendro qualified this by saying that what had occurred was not so
much the "de-Siliwangi-ization" or "de-Brawijaya-ization" as the emer-
gence of the "ruling officers' class" around Suharto. The members of
this "Cass" had been associated with Suharto "since the days of the
Mandala Command" (that is, 1962). Interview, July 11, 1981.239
Siliwangi officers were generally better educated and more cosmopoli-
tan in outlook than officers of other divisions. This was due to his-
torical circumstances. ’’The higher proportion of socially and educa-
tionally advantaged officers in the Siliwangi Division,” wrote McVey,
’’derived in good part from the fact that Bandung and Batavia were
principal centers of residence and education for the Western educated
Indonesian elite in the colonial period.”6 Most of the institutes of
higher learning in colonial Indonesia, including the Bandung Technical
Institute, were in West Java, as was the Dutch Military Academy.
Within the mainstream of army life, the importance of divisional
affiliations has been declining. The next generation, it has been
pointed out, is much more identified with various specialized services
and schools than with the localized combat experience and comradeship
of the revolution.7 However, the three Java "divisions” still figure
prominently in the thinking of the retired officers in whose lives they
played so central a role, even if old rivalries have been put aside for
the sake of a unified campaign against the present "in" group. Given
the disproportionate number of Siliwangi officers in the "opposition”
movement and the disproportionate number of Diponegoro officers in
the inner circles around Suharto, the statements and criticisms of a
number of prominent members of the so-called Barisan Sakit Hati
("Sick at Heart Brigade") may be seen, at least in part, as a final
working out of divisional rivalries that date back to the fifties.
A fifth feature of the above list is that three of the most prom-
inent army officers (Nasution, Mokoginta, and Kawilarang) were grad-
uates of the prewar Royal Military Academy in Bandung. (Lt. Gen.
T. B. Simatupang, an equally prominent retired officer and a man
whose concern about "a drift into militarism" had led to his involve-
ment in the Sawito Affair in 1976, was likewise a graduate of the
RMA.) The professional military training these officers received set
them apart from the much larger (and slightly younger) group of of-
ficers who were to receive their first military instruction at the hands
of the Japanese.
At the Military Academy, cadets underwent a rigorous two-year
course, with due emphasis being given to staff work. Those Indone-
sian youths who graduated as pjatoon commanders {shodancho} and
company commanders {chudancho} in the Japanese-sponsored Peta
were also given intensive and effective military training and subjected
to strict military discipline. (Battalion commanders {daidancho} were
usually political figures, much older and not seriously trained.)8 But
Peta graduates received only two to six months’ instruction, and none
6.	See McVey, "Post-Revolutionary Transformation of the Indonesian
Army," p. 133.
7.	See "Current Data on the Indonesian Military Elite," Indonesia 29
(April 1980): 157.
8.	See Benedict R. O.'G. Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), p. 21.240
were trained to command anything larger than a battalion. At the
same time, the academy’s graduates, coming in many cases from sec-
ond-generation Dutch-speaking homes, tended to be better educated
than the Peta officers. As a result of all this, they not only had a
clear professional edge over their Japanese-trained colleagues but also
in some cases a sense of hubris that tended to color their relation-
ships with those from Peta, something that tended to become more
pronounced after Peta officers replaced them in senior command posi-
tions. The prewar military cadets had belonged to a select group
chosen to study at the Military Academy. Most of the Peta officers
had less imposing credentials; Suharto, for example, had only reached
junior high school, Amir Machmud had attended a technical vocational
school. What is more, the better-trained academy graduates had
moved, at a very early age, into senior staff and command positions.
Simatupang was appointed chief of staff of the armed forces in 1950 at
the age of twenty-nine. Nasution, one year his senior, became army
chief of staff at the same time. (One of the retired generals, when
invited to the unveiling of the statue of General Sudirman in
Magelang, is said to have sniffed that he would not attend any gath-
ering at which ’’that sergeant" [Suharto] was officiating.)9
On the other hand, the RMA graduates were to be recruited
into the KN IL, a colonial army whose prime task was not external de-
fense but internal repression. In other words, men like Nasution,
Simatupang, Mokoginta, and Kawilarang were tainted initially by the
fact that they had enrolled for what amounted to mercenary and
antinationalist operations, and they had to work off the collaborator
image. Peta was at least a patriotic army, even if it had been spon-
sored by the Japanese and even if some of its members (Suharto
among them) had themselves served, albeit at a low level, in the
KNIL.
Finally, it might be pointed out that the comparatively exalted
military education in the RMA tended to buttress divisional affilia-
tions; all three Military Academy graduates were later to enter the
Siliwangi.
If the distinction between Javanese and Outer Islanders remains
of some importance in the Indonesian army, it is difficult to draw too
many conclusions from the above listing, which represents a fairly
even mix between the two. It has been argued that the central army
leadership is today made up of a disproportionate number of
Javanese, a statement that is hardly open to dispute. According to
recent surveys by the editors of the Cornell University bi-annual
journal Indonesia, almost 80 percent of the high command officeholders
whose ethnic identity can be determined have been Javanese.10
Moreover, as we have seen, the members of the "inner core group"
around Suharto—Yoga Sugama, Ali Murtopo, Sudomo, and Benny
9.	Confidential communication.
10.	Indonesia 29 (April 1980): 157.241
Murdani—were all Javanese, as were other key officers like
Sudharmono and Darjatmo. At the same time, it should not be forgot-
ten that there was a fairly strong non-Javanese presence at or close
to the top of the military pyramid. (The two men who served as min-
ister of defense between 1968-83 were Outer Islanders, although able
Javanese officers, including Surono, Sumitro, and Widodo, were avail-
able.) Several reasons account for this. One is that it was still
necessary to maintain a harmonious ethnic and regional balance in the
army, just as in the cabinet. Thus Panggabean had been for many
years the senior Batak in the army and Jusuf the senior officer from
South Sulawesi. Likewise, Amir Machmud had been the senior
Sundanese in the government. A second reason had to do with power
considerations; an Outer Islander was hardly likely to pose the sort
of threat to the incumbent president that a powerful and popular
Javanese officer might. In this sense, Javanese officers, although
accounting for a disproportionate number of senior positions, have
been kept at some distance from key military leadership posts.
Within the military, where the prevailing outlook was decidedly
abangan and Christian, there was, as we have seen, a deep-seated
suspicion concerning Muslim aims and objectives. And insofar as men
such as Nasution and Lt. Gen. R. Sudirman appeared to some in the
military to be unduly close to Islamic groups, it might be supposed
that they could be depicted as sympathizing with the so-called "Ul-
tra-Rightist Pancasila" group. However, it would be difficult to sup-
port such an assertion. Nasution and many other devout Muslims had
played a central role in the suppression of the Islamic fundamentalists
in the Darul Islam/Tentara Islam Indonesia and frequently made the
point that there was no need to juxtapose religion and Pancasila. If
one looks at the religion of those in the above list, it becomes obvi-
ous that all but a very few (such as Simatupang and Kawilarang)
were Muslim. Some of the retired officers were known to take their
religion very seriously; others were by way of being nominal Muslims.
Politically, the retired senior officers were a mixed grouping.
Initially there were some suggestions that Fosko was too "Sukarnoist"
in outlook, Sukendro, being characterized in certain quarters, as a
"100 percent Sukarnoist." Agus Prasmono, Djatikusumo, Jasin, and
Chandra Hasan were also allegedly, in varying degrees, "Sukarnoist"
in outlook. So too was Mokoginta. "I didn't join Fosko," one
prominent retired brigadier general said in 1982, "because I am anti-
Sukarno and there were too many officers there who were pro-
Sukarno."11 This argument is not especially persuasive. Sukendro
may well have had a certain residual regard for Sukarno—this, after
all, was common enough in the armed forces—but he had also clashed
with, and been banished by, Sukarno. (In the early 1980s,
Sukendro liked to portray himself as "more PSI" in outlook.)12 More-
over, it might have been thought that the Sukarnoist sympathies of
11.	Confidential communication, March 7, 1982.
12.	Interview with Maj. Gen. Sukendro, March 15, 1982.242
some would have been canceled out by the anti-Sukarnoist attitudes of
others in and around Fosko. Dharsono and Kemal Idris had led the
anti-Sukarno campaign in 1966-67 and yet Dharsono was able to work
closely with Sukendro on the Fosko daily board. The various differ-
ences, while they existed to some extent, were not really very influ-
ential. This was not a movement which took its bearings from the
ideological disputes of the 1950s and early 1960s, but one which
looked more towards the rather generalized ideals of 1945. Within the
Brasildi, and later the Fosko and the LKB, there was a fairly con-
scious effort to leave behind the idea of kekelompokan (compartmen-
talization). The starting point was 1945. At that time, the retired
officers suggested, everyone had been represented in a broad move-
ment and no one had fought for the kelompok. This, of course, pre-
sented a rather idealized version of the situation in 1945. If individ-
uals had not fought singlemindedly for the interests of their own par-
ticular group or cluster in 1945, it was due in large part to the ef-
forts of leaders like Sukarno who, recognizing the dangers of a di-
vided and disputatious nationalist movement, stressed broad goals that
were acceptable to all. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the various
dissident groups in Indonesia, did much the same thing.
While, as we have seen, there were differences in the way vari-
ous officers had entered the armed forces, there were equally impor-
tant distinctions in the timing and manner of their retirement.
The Sakit Hati Brigade
There has never really been a period in postindependence Indo-
nesia in which there were not at least some disaffected military offi-
cers sitting out their time on the sidelines. The intense political in-
fighting of the early 1950s, the October 17 Affair in particular, and
the regional rebellions of the late 1950s, created situations in which a
number of prominent military officers were forced into premature re-
tirement, either of a temporary or permanent nature. The most nota-
ble figure affected in this way was Nasution, who was forced to step
down as army chief of staff following the failed "half coup” of 1952;
he was to remain on the sidelines until recalled as chief of staff in
1955. However, many others faced similar and, in most cases, more
permanent exclusion. Simatupang, who had served as chief of staff
of the armed forces in the early 1950s, was forced into retirement—at
the age of 35—when his job was abolished in 1955. Colonels Husein,
Lubis, and Simbolon had been dishonorably discharged from the army
at the beginning of the PRRI rebellion in February 1958, for an al-
leged attempt to assassinate Sukarno and "attempting to change the
state and government by violence."13 Col. Alex Kawilarang was dis-
13. See Sundhaussen, Road to Power, p. 107. Husein and Simbolon
were amongst the rebels in Padang who proclaimed a Revolutionary
Government (PRRI) on February 15, 1958.243
charged from the army—but never prosecuted—after he and a large
number of Permesta rebels surrendered in April 1961.
These eruptions had seen the departure of a fairly steady
stream of officers, but the collapse of the Old Order and the ’’purifi-
cation" of the command structure created a situation in which much
greater numbers of officers found their services no longer required.
When Suharto was appointed defense minister in 1966, the Indonesian
military establishment was not only top-heavy with generals and air
marshalls but was staffed with many pro-Sukarno and left-leaning of-
ficers, particularly in the air force and the navy. Suharto's very
success in establishing his hold over the military establishment and
his ouster of so many Old Order figures, greatly augmented the pool
of retired officers, some of whom felt no compunction in criticizing
those who were now at the top.
In the late 1960s, a falling-out amongst New Order officers pro-
duced the first post-Sukarno crop of "sakit hati" officers. The first
wave to find themselves pushed to one side were Siliwangi figures
whom Crouch has described as New Order "militants." In 1968, as we
have seen, Nasution was manoeuvered into a parliamentary backwater.
In 1969, following a heavy-handed attempt to bring the various par-
ties in West Java together into "two groups," Dharsono, the Siliwangi
commander, and his colleague Kemal Idris, the Kostrad commander,
were replaced. These officers, like others who had seen the abrupt
termination of once promising careers, were later to turn up in the
Barisan Sakit Hati.
If the New Order "militants" tended to be at odds with the
Suharto leadership over matters of policy, there were stirrings, many
of which went unnoticed at the time, among another group of officers
who took exception to the corruption already becoming apparent under
the New Order. This second wave of New Order dissidents included
Hugeng, Jasin, and Ishak Djuarsa. Although the motives of these
men, Hugeng excepted, may not have always been as straightforward
as they might have liked to suggest, resentment over orders from
above to abandon corruption investigations figured prominently in the
disenchantment of at least two of them.
Hugeng, as we have seen, had been something of a carry-over
from the Sukarno era. Although on good terms with Suharto at the
time of his appointment as chief of the national police in mid-1968, he
soon found that Suharto "did not have the same open attitude towards
me as President Sukarno had shown. "ll+ One point of dissension con-
cerned the role of the national police force. Under the restructuring
plans drawn up by Sumitro in 1969, the four armed services were to
be unified under one command. Hugeng, who had quite good rela-
tions with Sumitro, accepted this, but argued that the national police
should be simply a civilian law enforcement agency, not a separate
14. See "Former police chief speaks out on regime," Tapol, Bulletin
13 (December 1975), p. 4.244
military force and not in any way a plaything of the armed forces.
This apparently conflicted with the intentions of the ruling army offi-
cers, and Hugeng, whose character allowed no room for compromise
on points of principle, came increasingly to be seen as a troublesome
and obstinate man. When, in 1971, Hugeng ordered his subordinates
to ensure that no intimidation occurred during the general election
campaign, the exasperation of the army generals grew still more pro-
nounced.15 In the meantime, Hugeng’s unswerving stand on law and
order matters had brought him into personal conflict with the minister
of defense/Kopkamtib commander, General Panggabean, and with Pres-
ident Suharto. At a cabinet meeting in 1970 Hugeng learned from
Foreign Minister Adam Malik that Yap Thiam Hien, a prominent lawyer
and government critic, had been arrested several days earlier by the
Jakarta police chief, Maj. Gen. Subroto. When Hugeng contacted his
deputy he found not only that the report was true but that Subroto
had followed Panggabean’s orders in arresting Yap without even
knowing the reasons for it. Infuriated at what he saw as thoroughly
unprofessional behavior, Hugeng ordered Yap’s immediate release,
bracing himself for an angry rejoinder from Panggabean. In the
event, Panggabean did nothing. However, he is said to have borne a
grudge towards Hugeng from that day.16
In 1971, Hugeng was summoned to the president’s home on a
Sunday morning and asked to drop the case against a smuggler and
set the man free; his refusal to do so greatly annoyed the president.
The same year, police captured an Indonesian Chinese confidence man
who went under the alias Haji Drs. Djokosuwarno SH and who was
wanted in connection with business frauds in Jakarta, Palembang,
Padang, Medan, and Kota Raja in Aceh. When the CID searched the
man's house they found photographs of him with Madame Suharto and
several of her younger brothers. They also found documents bearing
the first lady's signature. Hugeng, genuinely concerned about the
good name of the president, handed the material to Suharto the fol-
lowing day in the presence of the attorney general, Maj. Gen. Sugih
Arto, and the state secretary, Maj. Gen. Sudharmono, and suggested
it would be wise if measures were taken to prevent any recurrence of
such an event. Suharto, who said he had already advised his wife
not to get involved in such matters, appeared taken aback and em-
barrassed by the disclosures.
For the New Order leaders, the last straw came in September
1971 when Hugeng zeroed in on a huge smuggling racket at Tanjung
Priok, the port of Jakarta. Hundreds of expensive cars had been im-
ported duty-free by a smuggling ring headed by Robby Tjahjadi, a
young Indonesian Chinese who was said to be in league with a
Hankam staff officer who acted on behalf of certain members of the
first family. Hugeng, who had already broken one such ring,
planned to raid the port on September 19, 1971. However, instead of
15.	Interview with General Sumitro.
16.	Confidential communication.245
being rewarded for his enterprise, he was dismissed from his post.
On September 2, he was summoned by Panggabean and told, in the
presence of Sumitro, that the president had decided that his term as
chief of the national police was "considered finished." He was offered
the post of ambassador to the Netherlands, which he declined.17 In
1976, according to evidence given at the trial of Sawito Kartowibowo,
Hugeng told the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Indonesia,
Cardinal Justinius Darmojuwono, that he had reported to both the at-
torney general, Sugih Arto, and to Suharto himself that Madame Tien
Suharto was involved in the smuggling racket. However, Hugeng had
said, the smuggling had gone on regardless. According to the court
witness, the smuggling involved billions of rupiahs. "Mrs. Suharto
should have been tried before the courts," the witness said, "because
she had been involved in smuggling.1,18 The previous year, Hugeng
had given a Dutch television interviewer his opinions about the moral
dissolution of the times. "It seems," he said, "as if some people take
a pride in becoming rich overnight."19
If the chief of police was disturbed by the illegality he saw
around him, so too was General Jasin, the former deputy army chief
of staff. As we have seen, Jasin was to trace his disenchantment
with the Suharto regime to the instruction he was given to use un-
suitable trucks in the 1971 election campaign.
Ishak Djuarsa, who had shared many of the sentiments of the
early New Order militants like Dharsono and Kemal Idris, had also
been reined in when he had sought to crack down on smuggling while
serving as military commander in Aceh in 1965-67. According to evi-
dence given at the Sawito trial in November 1977, Ishak Djuarsa had
been abruptly ordered to halt these efforts "on orders from higher
up." In the words of one of his colleagues in Fosko, Ishak Djuarsa
had in 1966 been "shocked into disbelief" by the illegal activities of
members of the Suharto family in both Aceh and Palembang.20 In
1976, as the Sawito trial was to make clear, a disillusioned Ishak
Djuarsa, by then ambassador to Yugoslavia, was to play a central role
in the plot to force Suharto step down.21 (Ishak Djuarsa's own ac-
tivities in Aceh had caused even greater shock in certain quarters.
As panglima between 1965-67 he presided over an anti-Communist cam-
paign of exceptional brutality.)22
17.	Ibid.
18.	See David Jenkins, "Trial Touches Raw Nerves," FEER, January
13, 1978.
19.	Tapol, Bulletin 13.
20.	Confidential communication, March 25, 1982.
21.	FEER, January 13, 1978.
22.	Although well known for his zeal in combatting illegality, Ishak
Djuarsa was a man who had a reputation for extreme brutality. Apart
from his activities in Aceh, while he was serving as panglima in South246
In the years after 1970, a number of key officers around
Suharto either fell from favor or chose to distance themselves from
the government they had once served so willingly. In 1974, four
men—Sumitro, Sutopo Juwono, Sajidiman, and Charis Suhud—resigned
or were reassigned as a result of the Malari Affair. The following
year, Ibnu Sutowo was "honorably discharged" as the president di-
rector of Pertamina. In 1980, Widodo was dropped as army chief of
staff. However, these men had for many years been members of the
ruling elite and, whatever reservations they might have had about
Suharto, they tended to keep their criticisms to themselves or to ex-
press their concern in the most oblique way. The longer an officer
had been close to Suharto, it seemed, the more muted his criticism of
the government. This was also true to some extent of those from the
Suharto group who, like Sugih Arto, were to join Fosko. Sugih
Arto, who had served as ambassador to India after his four-year
(1966-70) term as attorney general, was a founding member of Fosko
in 1978. But few people were aware of this, and in time he found it
prudent to step back from the group. Munadi, the former governor
of Central Java, was likewise muted in any statements he made.
From the above observations, certain conclusions can be drawn
about Suharto's military critics in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
These officers tended to be as old as, or older than, the members of
the ruling group and had in a number of cases been the commanding
officers of those whose actions they now found unacceptable. Initially
at least, they were disproportionately drawn from the army and dis-
proportionately also from the Siliwangi. They tended to be more ide-
alistic than members of the government, more inclined to advocate
"radical" solutions to problems which were often of great complexity.
The "Sakit Hati" Officers: What They Sought
An analysis of the criticisms, both private and public, ex-
pressed by the "Sakit Hati" officers shows that, beneath a general-
ized disenchantment with "the situation" in Indonesia, there existed
three overlapping areas of concern. First and foremost, these offi-
Sumatra (1967-70) a number of PKI detainees are said to have been
executed in their cells, with the chief of the military police in
Palembang reportedly taking the strongest exception to these actions.
Confidential communication, March 21 , 1982. Between 1971 and 1975
Ishak Djuarsa was the senior officer at Kopkamtib in charge of
ASEAN/Indochinese affairs. He served briefly as ambassador to Cam-
bodia in 1975 and was named ambassador to Yugoslavia in 1976. De-
tained at the time of the Sawito Affair in 1976, he was later quietly
released and went into business with General Sumitro. Interview with
Ishak Djuarsa, February 28, 1981 . See also Arief, Indonesian Mili-
tary Leaders, pp. 89-90. (This book mistakenly lists Ishak Djuarsa's
birth date as 1926, instead of 1925.)247
cers shared a feeling that under Suharto the political, social, and
economic role of the armed forces had expanded beyond acceptable
limits. ABRI’s political role, they argued, was built on extra-
constitutional pillars and on "emergency" decrees which had long
since served their purpose. And, these officers felt, the ruling
group's preoccupation with public order was stifling legitimate political
expression. As Horowitz has observed: "Many analysts have noted
that the common military conception of public order consists essen-
tially of an 'absence of social conflict', disturbance, or unpredictable
action, 'an apolitical calm', 'the stability of a vacuum, a state undis-
turbed by the erratic movements of partisan bodies."23
The opposition generals, although they may once have sup-
ported the notion of depoliticizing a volatile and intensely politicized
nation, had come to believe that this process had been carried too
far, and that its continuation might provoke a serious backlash.
None of these officers, with the exception of Mokoginta, were in favor
of a "return to the barracks." They were committed to the notion
that ABRI had an	important	role to play	in society and saw	the dwi-
fungsi doctrine as	providing	a legitimation of such a role.	But they
wished to rid the	existing system of its	"excesses." On the whole,
they were inclined	to take a	more mature	and generous view	of civil-
ian society, to recognize its potential strengths rather than being
preoccupied by its apparent weaknesses. ABRI's continuing involve-
ment in an extensive range of business and economic activities was
likewise condemned. In the view of many retired officers it was time
to "regularize" a situation in which the line between penguasa (power
holder) and pengusaha (entrepreneur) had become dangerously
blurred.
A second area of concern was that there had been an enormous
increase in—and apparent indifference to—corruption under Suharto.
A number of retired officers, schooled in a stricter discipline than
those who assumed power in the mid-1960s, found the level of corrup-
tion morally reprehensible. (A number of others, it is true, found it
prudent to refrain from comment on this topic, having themselves
grown enormously wealthy through the systematic plunder of the pub-
lic purse.) They felt that the system should operate not on the basis
of what Feith has described as the "judicious distribution of patron-
age," but through a system that was essentially legal and predictable.
In this, they were at one with the student critics of the regime.
Corruption was a matter of real concern to men like Nasution,
Sudirman, Kawilarang, and Hugeng, officers of a "Calvinist" bent who
regretted the passing of the old values. Indeed, in Kawilarang's
case, an abhorrence of the corrupt practices of the "Yogya-Solo" offi-
cers seemed to have been one of the main factors—if not the main
factor—in the decision to join Fosko.
23. See Donald L. Horowitz, Coup Theories and Officers1 Motives:
Sri Lanka in Comparative Perspective (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1980), p. 169.248
Finally, many of these officers felt that the Javanese abangan
and Christian generals around Suharto were taking an unduly narrow
and repressive view of Islam in general and political Islam in particu-
lar. This concern tended to take two forms. Some retired officers,
Nasution for example, sympathized with the Islamic cause. Others
were wary of Islam but feared that heavy-handedness might make the
situation worse.
There was no unanimity on the relative importance of the vari-
ous items in this catalog of grievances. Some retired officers,
Nasution and Sudirman for example, focused on al, three areas, even
if they tended to put primary emphasis on the need for constitutional
purification. Some, like Jasin, Kawilarang, and Hugeng, stressed the
spread of corruption under the New Order. Many voiced a concern
about the government's negative view of Islam. (Others, like
Simatupang, a prominent member of the Christian community, tended
to accept the notion that certain former Masyumi leaders, Natsir in
particular, were bent on the eventual creation of an Islamic state.)24
In the late 1970s, these streams came together in one major
current of dissent. Moreover, these retired officers' views had much
in common with the sort of criticism being expressed both within the
army and from outside civilian groups. By' 1980, there was a broad
and somewhat unique alliance between a number of retired senior offi-
cers and "retired politicians," with linkages to the student movement.
Their views found expression in both Fosko and the LKB and in such
things as the Petition of Fifty.
Although the critics were linked more by a sense of what they
opposed than what they sought to build, and although they in no way
posed a substantive threat to the government, they did succeed in
chipping away at the moral authority and legitimacy of the ruling
group. To the government, the criticism of the retired officers
proved particularly irritating. These retired "seniors" enjoyed an im-
munity—initially at least—that did not extend to their civilian coun-
terparts, and their prominent "names" gave their criticism additional
weight and respectability. The government, not taking kindly to
this, evinced its displeasure in a number of ways.
The Official View of the Criticism
The government attitude, as articulated by such officers as
Sudomo, Benny Murdani, and Yoga Sugama, was not one of forbear-
ance or understanding. These officers tended to take a cynical view
of the motives of the government's critics. They allowed little room
for the possibility that the criticism derived from anything other than
self-serving motivations and were loath to concede, in public at any
24. This was a recurrent theme in Simatupang's thinking and one
which found expression in interviews on June 10,	1980, July 31,
1981, and March 19, 1982.249
rate, that there might have been a genuine undercurrent of concern
in these expressions of discontent.
Essentially, those in power took the view that the retired gen-
erals were members of an ’'out” group and that most, if not all, would
fall into line if the price was right. According to Jasin, Suharto’s
reaction, when Adam Malik showed him the Jasin letter, was: "Jasin is
just sakit hati because he didn’t get facilities. It is a [small] mat-
ter."25 Harmony, the ruling group seemed to believe, could be main-
tained through the distribution of patronage. And there was, of
course, some justification for this sort of cynicism. When, in 1980
and 1981, attractive inducements were offered to a number of dissi-
dent generals on the condition that they abandon their antigovernment
stance, a number quietly accepted, if only out of a concern for the
welfare of their families. However, this fairly deep-seated cynicism
about the motivation of former comrades was clothed, in public at
least, with quasi-sociological explanations about why these troublesome
old men acted as they did. In Sudomo’s opinion, these officers were
unhappy victims of the "post-power syndrome." They were men, he
suggested, who had once been powerful figures in society, whose
opinions had helped determine national policy, and who, in their time,
had commanded respect and obedience. They had been provided with
large houses and chauffeur-driven limousines. Their children had at-
tended the best schools. Now they were nothing. They had been
pensioned off and left, or so it seemed to them, to fend for them-
selves. (In fact, as other serving officers were quick to point out,
most had been well set up for their retirement, with access to gener-
ous bank credit and other facilities. It could not be said that the
New Order did not look after its own.) Cut off from the institution
that had been a dominant influence in their lives—sometimes while still
in their forties—these men had grown embittered and disillusioned.
They had become sour and ungrateful, nurturing a grievance against
those who were still in office.
There was, it must be said at once, some truth in this charac-
terization. Several officers had never really come to terms with their
exclusion from the decision-making process. This, combined in some
cases with a sense of hubris, an awareness that they had been dis-
placed by men they still tended to look on as subordinates, did influ-
ence the criticisms of some retired officers.
Another charge from those in power was that the retired offi-
cers had never shown much aversion to a strong military-backed gov-
ernment when they were in office. Murdani, for example, was wont
to make the point that Nasution was the man who had paved the way
for strong presidential rule, who had formulated the dwifungsi doc-
trine which legitimized the military’s social role, who had come up
with the notion of ABRI as the "dynamizer and stabilizer" of society,
and who had presided over the birth of Sekber Golkar. In the
1950s, as members of the ruling group would note, "Pak Nas" had
25. Interview with Lt. Gen Jasin, May 23, 1980.250
been the one who wanted to take firm measures against the political
parties, and for him to present himself as a born-again democrat was
hypocritical.26 Sumitro, whose attitudes remained very much in tune
with those of the ruling elite, took a similar view.
If Pak Nas were president he would do the same things.
Believe me, he would do the same things. The best navi-
gator, the best captain, is on shore. . . . Oh, Nas!
He’s worst. He is authoritarian! Really! That’s why in
1971 or 1972 I was warning him: "Once you do it, i’ll
detain you. Using that Mimbar Bebas [Free Forum, a
seminar at the University of Indonesia prior to the 1971
elections]. ... I told him, "You belong to the past.
You had your chance actually but you didn't have the
courage to grasp it."27
Much the same sort of criticism, some of it justified, was di-
rected at men like Dharsono, Jasin, and Ishak Djuarsa, all of whom
had exhibited authoritarian tendencies while in office and none of
whom had been particularly noted for a commitment to the free ex-
pression of the popular will. In the view of the ruling group, these
officers had left their criticism too late. Murdani, who seemed deeply
offended that men like Ali Sadikin, Nasution, and Hugeng could act
as they did, said in 1980: "My answer is: 'Why didn't you say these
things when you had stars on your shoulders?"'28 (The answer,
members of Fosko and the LKB were quick to reply, was that men
like Nasution, Dharsono, and Hugeng had done just that and had paid
the price for it.) Having retired, it was argued, these officers
should have had the grace to sit back and let their successors get on
with the job. There was something improper, it was suggested, in
the fact that these old generals kept carping about the performance
of a new group of leaders—particularly as they brought all of ABRI's
dirty linen out into public view. In Yoga's view, if everyone was
able to adjust himself to the thought that "there's a time to come,
there's a time to go" then no one would be frustrated.
Take my case, for instance. I will be happy if I can
leave my active duty. . . . Somebody will replace me.
And I will adjust myself because mentally I'm already pre-
pared for this. I don't expect any special treatment from
26.	Nasution's answer, as we have seen, was that the dwifungsi doc-
trine was meant to be implemented with restraint, that ABRI was sup-
posed to work as a partner of the civilian groups, not seek to domi-
nate the landscape. In 1981, Nasution argued that military men
should not serve as the heads of large government-owned corporations
or as heads of economic institutions. Interview, March 2, 1981.
27.	Interview with General Sumitro, July 18, 1981.
28.	Interview with Lt. Gen. Benny Murdani, July 3, 1980.251
the state when I am retired. I will be happy to become a
normal, ordinary citizen. And I will easily adjust myself
and forget what I have been before. 1 have considered
myself as being a player in a certain story, a way a ng
story. When the dalang thinks he needs you, you could
be put into the play. When the dalang is finished then
you can be put into the box. If you are content with
that kind of philosophy, I don’t think there is anything
in this world that could make you frustrated. When the
dalang is finished with you it will be time for you to go
into the box. ... I’m just somebody who plays a certain
act in a certain story. The story happens to be the
Revolution Indonesia, the Republic of Indonesia. I played
my part, so I can retire. You cannot always be playing
your part. There is always some beginning and some
end. . . . These chaps, they have had their chance.
. . . Why come now, after the government doesn't need
them anymore? . . . When I am finished I will be nothing
anymore. I should not come and say, "The government
should do this, should do that!" I have had my time to
say my piece. I had my chance to do that if I wanted.
Why now? They are retired. That's wrong.29
Sumitro, who was not unlike Yoga in a number of ways, took pre-
cisely the same view. Most officers, he felt, shared the view that it
was necessary to reduce ABRI's involvement. But it should not be
done by making speeches, by criticizing the government.
The retired officers still want to have their say. But
they should accept that they are retired. Take me, for
instance. I was in army for thirty-two years. But I
don't have any expectations because I believe that who-
ever succeeds me will be better than me. Without me the
Republic will go on. Don't consider yourself very impor-
tant. No! If you want to share your opinion, give ad-
vice but do it in a mature way. Because by fighting you
gain nothing, you gain nothing.30
To men like Nasution, an ABRI man was an ABRI man until the
day he died; he had a responsibility to fight for what he believed
was right. To Yoga and his fellow officers in the ruling circle, an
ABRI man fought for his beliefs while still in uniform and then went
gracefully "into the box," a philosophy which of course had its obvi-
ous attractions to an "in" group. The retired officers not only re-
jected this philosophy on principle but, being in their view all too fa-
miliar with the ways of the dalang, had no inclination to allow the
"excesses" to go by unremarked. It was possible also to detect some-
29.	Interview with General Yoga Sugama, July 15, 1981.
30.	General Sumitro interview, July 18, 1981.252
thing self-serving in the argument of the ruling generals that, after
retirement, they would be heard from no more. Being of the ruling
group and largely in agreement with its policies (which, of course,
they' had helped shape) they would have no need to criticize, except
in the unlikely event that a radically different group were to come to
power.
A fourth criticism was that, with the exception of Nasution,
Hugeng, and perhaps one or two others, the retired generals were
just as corrupt as those they sought to criticize. "Most of these
people,” one of the Ali Murtopo’s colleagues said in 1980, "are just as
corrupt as anyone else. We have a laundry list. We can hit back if
they want that.”31 There was some truth in this assertion, many of-
ficers having helped themselves to the spoils that had been available
to those in authority for the past twenty years. But these remarks
would seem to overstate the extent of corruption among the retired
officers. Certainly there were more than a few officers who were
prepared to maintain their criticisms of the government, threats of
this nature notwithstanding.
The Official Response
In coping with the dissident generals, Suharto relied on both
carrots and sticks, both of which were in ample supply. The initial
approach, as so often in the past, was to seek to coopt the critics by
offering them all manner of perquisites and privileges in exchange for
a cessation of their criticism; given the government view that the
critics tended to be dissatisfied because of a denial of "facilities,”
there was a certain logic in this. In pursuing the campaign to disarm
his opponents, Suharto relied to a considerable extent on Sumitro,
who was seen more and more around town in the early 1980s and who
seemed to be increasingly back in favor. Sumitro shared some of the
concerns of the dissident group. He felt, for example, that
Kopkamtib should be dismantled and was disturbed that patrimonialism
was still "shadowing" the Indonesian political process.32 However,
Sumitro seemed to be talking more about fine tuning the existing sys-
tem; he was not talking about the sort of fundamental changes that
the critics had in mind. Moreover, he seemed anxious to persuade
Suharto that he had harbored no ambitions in 1974, giving every in-
dication that he sought to win back a place on the Suharto team,
however difficult that might seem. By early 1981, Sumitro was mak-
ing periodic visits to Suharto's office and benefiting from his willing-
ness to play by the established rules of the game. He owned PT
Rigunas which had a forest concession of 300,000 hectares in Irian
Jaya and managed PT Tjakra Sudarma which operated in the field of
ABRI equipment purchases. He was also the chief supervisor of PT
31.	Interview with Jusuf Wanandi, 1980.
32.	Interview with General Sumitro.253
Riasima Abadi, a pharmaceuticals company in Citeureup, West Java.33
The former Kopkamtib commander had also been entrusted with sev-
eral special government assignments. One of these involved working
with the minister of research. Dr. J. B. Habibie, on long-term de-
fense planning. Another centered on a government attempt to de-
velop Irian Jaya. In the eyes of some of the critics, Sumitro had
been bought off by those in power. His philosophy, said one retired
general, was "typically Javanese—if you can't beat them, join
them."3** Sumitro, in fact, saw things from a very different perspec-
tive; he was not "joining" the Suharto group, he had never really
left it. Sumitro seemed to nurture the hope that he might make some
sort of a "comeback," perhaps in a ministerial capacity, a forlorn ex-
pectation as it turned out. And though it was purely coincidental
that this partial reemergence of Sumitro came at a time when other
retired generals were becoming increasingly critical of the govern-
ment, Suharto was quick to seize on the opportunity it presented.
Well versed in the frailties of human nature, the president was always
ready to give those around him a chance to prove both their useful-
ness and loyalty. Early in 1978, for example, Dr. Mochtar
Kusumaatmadja, acting foreign minister and eager to land the Foreign
Ministry post in the upcoming Suharto Cabinet, had been given the
somewhat distasteful job of going around the ASEAN capitals and
gaining postfacto support for Suharto's decision to remove Dharsono
as secretary general of ASEAN. Successful, he had been rewarded
with the position he sought. Now, early in 1981, Sumitro sought to
prove his loyalty to Suharto by prevailing upon certain dissident gen-
erals to abandon their confrontationist position.35
Sumitro had already gone into business with Ishak Djuarsa,36
and he is said to have had authority to offer certain guarantees to
dissident generals who might be persuaded to call off their criticism.
If these generals agreed to cooperate, Sumitro is alleged to have
said, they would be awarded "big projects."37 The former Kopkamtib
commander is said to have told one retired general: "Don't criticize
and you can say where you would like to sit; here, here, or here."
Those who cooperated, it was alleged, could have their own company
to run. Several generals who, like Sumitro, had one or more families
to support, were in difficult financial straits and felt compelled to
bow out of the protest movement.38 Their withdrawal was one of the
more recent examples of the government's dependence on, and suc-
cessful employment of, patronage distribution. As we have seen, for
33.	Tempo, November 22, 1980.
34.	Confidential communication.
35.	Confidential communication, March 1981.
36.	Tempo, November 22, 1980.
37.	Confidential communication.
38.	Ibid.254
those who refused to play ball the government had other methods,
some of which were exceptional in their pettiness and meanness of
spirit.
These various efforts by the ruling group took their toll. Men
like Djatikusumo dropped out of the "ex-Fosko" grouping, partly be-
cause they came to adopt the opinion that more could be gained from
working within the system, partly too for other reasons. Ishak
Djuarsa, Harun Sohar, and Daan Jahja also dropped out. By March
1981, even Jasin was out of the picture, having formally apologized to
Suharto, largely, it appears, because of the intense pressure brought
to bear on his family. But many retired senior officers associated
with the ’’ex-Fosko11 group and with the LKB doggedly soldiered on,
as did many prominent civilians associated with these bodies. By
1983, five major civilian and military ’’protest” organizations had con-
verged in a loose Forum Komunikasi Nasional, which brought together
representatives from the Petition of Fifty, the "ex-Fosko" group, the
LKB, the Lembaga Sukarno-Hatta, and the Silaturrahmi 45. (The
Lembaga Sukarno-Hatta was a reform-minded body set up by Suken-
dro and Mokoginta. The Silaturrahmi 45 was a body made up of rep-
resentatives from the nine political parties which had contested the
1971 elections.) Many of the Forum Nasional's "council of elders,"
which included Nasution, Mohammad Natsir, Sanusi Hardjadinata, Ali
Sadikin, Dharsono, and Sudirman, now took the view that it was nec-
essary to build bridges to those in the government.
Men like Sukendro, Dharsono, Hugeng, Sudirman, and others of
the "ex-Fosko" grouping continued to meet each Friday morning in a
shabby conference room at the Graha Purna Yudha (Veterans) Build-
ing, joined as often as not by civilians like Slamet Bratanata. A
strong sense of shared purpose and camaraderie marked these ses-
sions. Men who had in their time held high office in the armed
forces and the government shuffled into the room in tennis shirts and
slacks, and the air was rich with the aroma of tobacco smoke, the
talk of new petitions and protest papers. The deliberations were
characterized by a lot of good-natured bantering and by a wry,
though sometimes angry, acceptance of the increasing pressures to
which all were being subjected. The meetings, however, seemed in-
creasingly irrelevant and time began to take its own toll on the par-
ticipants. In 1982 the group was saddened by the news that Maj.
Gen. Muamil Effendy had died, in 1983 by the news of the death of
Maj. Gen. Iskandar Ranuwihardjo. In the same year Sukendro
suffered a crippling brain haemorrhage and Mokoginta was hospitalized
with serious spinal trouble; by 1984 both men were dead and the
ex-Fosko grouping robbed of two of its more dynamic members.CONCLUSION
By 1980, it was possible to discern two distinct schools of
thought within ABRI over the question of the army's appropriate role
in society. First, there was the "leadership group," a tightly knit
and extraordinarily powerful body of men, centered on the president
and including the key members of his inner circle. This group was
broadly committed to a system, largely of its own creation, in which
the armed forces occupied all manner of positions in Indonesian so-
ciety and enjoyed immense influence over everyday affairs. This pat-
tern of influence and control seemed likely to remain operative, with
only slight modifications, for as long as Suharto remained in power.
There were several reasons for this. For one thing, the position of
the president was so secure and his powers of patronage so extensive
that few dared openly to challenge his authority. For another, the
army was disproportionately abangan Javanese in composition, inclined
by orientation and indoctrination to go along with the basic tenets of
the ruling group, even if there were occasional doubts in some quar-
ters about the wisdom of certain of its policies. Third, the rigid hi-
erarchy of the "modern" army command system reinforced a preexist-
ing and "traditional" cultural disposition to accord extraordinary re-
spect and deference to those in authority. Acutely status-conscious,
aware of the penalties of stepping out of line, and willing in any case
to bide their time until they were themselves in senior command posi-
tions, middle-ranking officers left decisions on such topics to their
superiors, men who could claim the aura of revolutionary legitimacy
and who were more experienced in social-political affairs.
A second—and much more heterogeneous—group of officers felt
that it was necessary for ABRI to take a more enlightened and indul-
gent view of Indonesian society and yield up a good deal of its con-
trol. Among these were active army officers from the operational side
of the armed forces, including such men as Jusuf, Widodo, Sajidiman,
and Abdulkadir Besar, one of the army's leading theoreticians.
Widjojo Sujono was thought to share these views to some extent. Also
in agreement with this type of thinking were two prominent but dis-
placed intelligence officers—Sutopo Juwono, the former head of Bakin
and an advocate of a more principled approach to intelligence matters,
and Charis Suhud. A significant number of prominent retired officers
were also associated in one way or another with these views, among
them Nasution, Simatupang, Djatikusumo, Sudirman, Sukendro,
Dharsono, Mokoginta, Jasin, Kawilarang, Sugih Arto, Kemal Idris,
and Ishak Djuarsa. As we have seen, two characteristics of the re-
tired military critics were that they included a disproportionate num-
ber of former Siliwangi officers, and that Nasution exercised a contin-
255256
uing influence over them. Nasution's political thinking found expres-
sion in both the Seskoad and Widodo papers and his organizational
skill manifested itself in the activities of the LKB. At the same time,
he maintained close ties with retired army officers in Fosko, most
notably with Sudirman and Mokoginta.
The various criticisms were in no sense a threat to the stability
or the security of the Suharto government, there being insufficient
support in the community for any concerted opposition the president's
rule and more than a little cynicism about the motives and sincerity of
former military leaders who were now so ready to condemn institutions
in which they once served so diligently. Even so, their criticisms
gave the leadership pause for thought. It is one of the minor con-
ceits of senior officers that ABRI men, whether sergeants or gener-
als, are uniquely qualified to lead, and the history of the Republic,
they feel, has amply borne out this contention. The fact that so
many "big name" retired officers were expressing criticism was, in
the government's eyes, something that needed to be handled with
care.
Initially, it sought to stem the unrest by summoning and rebuk-
ing critics like Kemal Idris and Dharsono. But as the movement
gathered momentum, greater efforts were made to buy off the opposi-
tion with offers of money and "facilities," often apparently quite gen-
erous. This tactic, as we have seen, had some success. However,
when it became apparent that most critics were immune to, or con-
temptuous of, such blandishments, the government adopted a tougher
line. In the wake of the Petition of Fifty, it undertook a serious
campaign aimed at "cutting the lifelines" of its critics.
In the introduction to this paper it was suggested that two cen-
tral issues were being debated within the Indonesian armed forces
during the period 1975-82. One was the question of ABRI's stance
vis-a-vis the various political groupings in the country. The other
was the question of the "purification" of the dwifungsi and the possi-
ble reduction in the number of military men serving outside the de-
fense structure as such. By 1982 it seemed clear that, despite inti-
mations of change during the late 1970s, the ruling group envisaged
no meaningful realignment of ABRI's relations with the political
forces. Fearful that there were elements bent on changing the 1945
Constitution and the Pancasila and disinclined to see the army yield
up its very extensive power over the system, the president was in-
sisting that ABRI "choose friends" who truly supported the accepted
doctrines and, by extension, the status quo. Suharto, it is true,
had begun assuring senior officers in 1981 that ABRI would in future
play a less prominent role in the affairs of Golkar and would not
openly support it in the 1982 general elections. But this was mis-
leading. ABRI could afford to be less visible during the campaign
precisely because Golkar was, at the national level, totally under the
control of the ruling group. Suharto's decision in 1978 to become
chairman of Golkar's central supervisory board had signalled the like-
lihood that this would not change while he remained president. The257
vigor of his remarks at Pekanbaru in March 1980 had underscored the
depths and dimensions of his feelings regarding ABRI-Golkar rela-
tions. There was, clearly, an unbridgeable chasm between the basic
philosophy that ABRI was "above all groups" and President Suharto’s
strictures that the armed forces should "choose friends," a chasm
that no amount of sophistry could disguise.
As we have seen, there had been some valiant obscurantism on
this issue at the annual Golkar leadership meeting in 1979. At that
time it was suggested that ABRI in its capacity as a stabilizer was in-
deed above all groups, but that ABRI in its capacity as a social-
political force was still a functional group and a component of Golkar.
From this line of reasoning there developed the notion that ABRI was
the New Order's "champion" and thus entitled to guide and direct it
via Golkar. ABRI as a social-political force, it was suggested, was
far from neutral; it had not only brought forth Golkar but was en-
titled to give it its full backing. This rather disingenuous attempt to
have things both ways did not attract widespread support either in
Golkar or in the armed forces. To many of Golkar's members it was
all simply a matter of semantics, a debate which had about as much
relevance as discourses in mediaeval Europe about how many angels
could dance on the head of a single pin. As a member of Ali
Murtopo's circle observed with customary frankness, ABRI and Golkar
were the same thing and where was the point in arguing about it?
The "rationalization" suggested in 1979 was hardly more popular with-
in the armed forces. When it was debated at the ABRI Commanders
Call in Bandung in March 1982 the argument was not found to be par-
ticularly persuasive, and the meeting broke up without succeeding in
formulating a doctrine which bridged the two points of view.1 In the
final analysis, a fundamental contradiction remained between the
"pure" doctrine, requiring the armed forces to be above all groups,
and the injunctions of those in command to weigh in behind Golkar.
Given the structure of the system, it was practically impossible for
serving officers to reject or resist the policy that came from the line
of command. On the other hand, the "pure" doctrine still commanded
widespread support within the armed forces (and within the army in
particular) and it was by no means certain that its eclipse would be
so pronounced under another leader.
If the debate over ABRI's relations with the political groupings
had led back to square one, the same did not happen with the paral-
lel discussion over the dwifungsi doctrine and the future of the
kekaryaan ABRI. At the Commanders Call in 1982, the leaders of the
armed forces endorsed the notion that, while the dwifungsi as a phi-
losophy was everlasting, its implementation was dependent on the sit-
uation at any given time. The mission of the dwifungsi, it was said,
was to stimulate Pancasila democracy in all fields. This included the
preparation and encouragement of civilian cadres to take over many of
1. Interview with Brig. Gen. (Hon.) Nugroho Notosusanto, March
12. 1982.258
the functions still being handled by military men. (In a parallel deci-
sion, the meeting decided that only those military men who were actu-
ally needed by a particular department would go into kekaryaan
duties.)2 On the surface, this sounded very much like a string of
earlier and equally pious declarations that implied an imminent scaling
back on ABRI's involvement in society. This time, however, there
were reasons for believing that the armed forces' leaders were indeed
contemplating a reduction in military involvement in the civilian sec-
tor, at least at the middle and lower levels. These had to do with
the quantity and quality of military personnel available to handle
these functions. As we have seen, the appointment of military men to
kekaryaan positions in the mid-1960s not only allowed the army to en-
hance its grip on society at a time of dislocation and upheaval. It
also made it possible for the armed forces to "demobilize” effectively
many officers and men of the revolutionary generation, shunting them
into comfortable positions while at the same time pruning the military
establishment back to a more manageable size. By 1980, there was,
for the first time, a shortage of officers available for kekaryaan
duties. The armed forces had been pared back to 300,000 men (not
counting the 100,000-man national police force) and was finding it in-
creasingly difficult to maintain 17,000 men (or nearly 6 percent of its
force) in kekaryaan positions. (If those serving in a territorial ca-
pacity were added to those fulfilling a kekaryaan role, roughly one-
third of the 300,000-man defense force was occupied in noncombat
duties.) As karyawan of the 1945 generation retired, the problem
became more acute.3
At the same time, there was a widespread feeling at the upper
levels of the armed forces that insufficient younger officers had the
necessary skills and qualifications to serve as karyawan. To some
extent, this view stemmed from one of the more understandable con-
ceits of the Generation of '45, or at least of some of its members. In
their own self-image, these men had been members of a unique move-
ment of youthful activists who, fired by nationalism and a burning
revolutionary ardor, had helped wrest independence from the Dutch.
Tempered by war and tested by the political, economic, and military
challenges of the postindependence period, they saw themselves as
uniquely placed to "stabilize and dynamize" the nation, and tended at
times to look somewhat askance at the capabilities of others who might
aspire to such office—including the men they had selected as their
eventual successors. There appeared, however, to be some justifica-
tion for those doubts. By 1980 it had become clear that the Military
Academy (Akabri) at Magelang was not attracting the cream of the
nation's youth, the obvious possibilities for self-advancement in the
2.	Interview with Lt. Gen. Sutopo Juwono, March 22, 1982.
3.	In 1982 ABRI was having difficulty not just in finding enough
personnel for its combat units but for its territorial organization as
well. In one of its decisions, the 1982 Commanders Call stressed that
efforts must be made to strengthen the territorial structure.259
military sphere notwithstanding. The best and the brightest students
were seeking admission to prestigious centers of learning, like the
University of Indonesia or the Bandung Institute of Technology
(ITB). There were a number of reasons for this. First, most Indo-
nesian families had no strong tradition of military service, even if, as
is the case, more than half of the Akabri cadets are the children of
ABRI members.1* Indeed, there is a certain disdain for those in the
armed forces. Second, opportunities were growing rapidly in the ci-
vilian sector. Finally, as in many other countries, the peacetime
army seemed to hold little attraction for many young people. Given
all this, there was a feeling, even amongst senior military officers,
that Akabri was in some ways a ’’second-class" institution. The
Military Academy offered cadets a four-year course, with the time be-
ing divided almost equally between "pure" military and more general
social-political subjects. And while this compared favorably with the
stronger "military" emphasis in academies in most neighboring coun-
tries, there was a feeling in some quarters that insufficient attention
was being given to nonmilitary subjects. This, it was feared, would
make it difficult in later years for military officers to hold their own
with their better-educated civilian equivalents.
By 1982, President Suharto and his key military advisers seem
to have accepted the need for a progressive reduction in the number
of military men serving in a kekaryaan capacity, as recommended by
the authors of the Hankam paper. Such a reduction would owe much
to the difficulties noted above of locating sufficient younger officers
with the necessary qualifications to serve as karyawan. But it would
also reflect a fairly widespread feeling in society that it was becoming
increasingly difficult to justify the large number of ABRI personnel in
key civilian positions. At the same time, it was frankly conceded in
ruling circles that ABRI intended to go on controlling the upper
levels of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of govern-
ment. This being so, the changes should be seen as only a very
qualified reduction in the scale of kekaryaan activity. The number of
karyawan might decrease but no one could say by what amount. More
important still, the cutback would be carried out from the bottom up,
leaving military control over the commanding heights essentially in-
tact.
All of this is taking place at a time when the members of the
so-called "Magelang Generation"—officers admitted to the Military
Academy in the years since 1957—are moving into senior staff and
command positions, replacing members of the Generation of 1945 and
the (scarcely younger) members of the "bridging generation." Given
that the members of the younger generation will also "inherit" the
military’s dominant role in society, the centra, question that arises
concerns the likely orientation and outlook of the members of this
4. See Donald E. Weatherbee, "Indonesia’s Armed Forces: Rejuvena-
tion and Regeneration," Southeast Asian Affairs 1982 (Singapore: In-
stitute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1982), p. 27.260
"generation." Will they be inclined to play a greater role in society,
or are they likely to preside over a gradual "recivilianization" of the
government?
First, it must be said that surprisingly little is known about
the social and political outlook of the younger officers. Few outsiders
have been vouchsafed entry into their circle and even when communi-
cation is established the results tend to be disappointing; wary of in-
curring their superiors’ displeasure, the officers in question are re-
luctant to offer opinions about anything of much substance. On the
other hand, access is possible at one remove—via those older officers
who have served as the instructors and mentors of the Magelang gen-
eration. Here, opinions tend to be very much at opposite poles.
Some senior officers hold out high hopes for the new generation;
others harbor the most serious misgivings about them and what they
might do. (Interestingly, and perhaps not surprisingly, those senior
officers who tend to take a generally benign view of society and who
call for decreasing military involvement tend on the whole to be opti-
mistic. In this sense, those we have described as being of a more
"principled" cast of mind are optimists when it comes to the new gen-
eration. The more "pragmatic" officers associated with the present
ruling group tend on the whole to be surprisingly pessimistic about
their successors—despite the very considerable opportunity they have
had to mould their character and select and promote those who most
conform to their own image.)
There can be little gainsaying that the intellectual horizons of
the younger officers are not especially wide. As Weatherbee has
noted, the curriculum at Akabri is "narrow and intellectually con-
strained, stressing traditional military virtues of discipline, con-
formity and duty."5 Moreover, the "ideological quotient" is high,
great stress being put on the inculcation and acceptance of ABRI
doctrine (as currently interpreted) and world view, particularly re-
garding the link between security, stability, and development. (Much
the same criticism can be levelled at the curriculum at the Army Staff
and Command School [Seskoad] in Bandung, the disclaimers of senior
officers notwithstanding.)6 At the same time, the younger military
officers would certainly seem to have greater professional and military
skills than the current generation of military leaders. This, how-
ever, is precisely where the problems arise.
Militarism or Military Professionalism?
"Professionalism" is a possible departure point for two very dif-
ferent types of development. One such development could arise from
what might be described as "professionalism narrowly defined." The
5.	Ibid., p. 26.
6.	For details of the Seskoad course, see Charles Donald McFetridge,
"Seskoad—Training the Elite," Indonesia 36 (October 1983): 87-98.261
younger generation, it is pointed out by some senior officers, have
not had the experiences of the Generation of '45 and thus have a
very different perception of the dwifungsi. By and large, it is
claimed, they take pride in their military professionalism and pay in-
sufficient attention to their social-political role. As we have seen,
the best of the younger officers will have served as Kodim com-
manders before attending Seskoad. Similarly, the best of the Seskoad
graduates will have been sent abroad as military attaches or been
given a Korem command. Despite this heavy official stress on the so-
cial-political function, it is suggested, the younger officers do not
particularly favor such responsibilities, even if they accept their ne-
cessity in order to "get on" in the system. More concerned with
ABRI’s function as a defense force, some senior officers fear they
may be in danger at times of "giving up" their social-political role
and abandoning the field to civilians. In this sense, they are
thought to be in danger of moving towards the "Western" model, in
which the army is merely an instrument of the state. Put another
way, the younger officers are becoming less "red" and more "expert."
At Seskoad, where the die is cast for senior career appointments,
lecturers have noted that with each new crop of mid-career officers
the perception of the dwifungsi grows thinner.
If members of this group fear that the younger generation is
becoming more military-minded in the sense that its officers have little
interest in the social-political function, there is another, diametrically
opposed, school of thought. Members of this school believe that the
younger officers are in danger of becoming more authoritarian and im-
patient, more inclined to use the army's power to effect political and
social change. This argument carries a good deal of weight.
The "younger" officers—and some, it should be remembered,
are not far off 50—are certainly better trained and more professional
than members of the revolutionary generation, or indeed most mem-
bers of the small but influential generosi jembatan (bridging genera-
tion), officers trained in the years 1950-57. But this hardly means
that they will eschew a political role. Indeed, their whole training
has been based on the notion that ABRI has a central and everlasting
role to play in the social-political field, and they appear to accept
this notion without question. What is more, their progression up
through the ranks exposes them, as we have seen, to both military
and social-political functions. This means that by the time a 45-
year-old becomes a Kodam commander he will have had extensive ex-
perience in social-political matters. Already there is a good deal of
evidence to suggest that the lieutenant colonels who emerge from
Seskoad are inclined to be more, not less, active in these areas than
an earlier generation of military men, pushing the local bupati (re-
gent) to do more, to achieve more, to meet the planning targets. In
ABRI, where promotion is on the basis of merit, it never hurts to
have a 150 percent success rate.
In these circumstances it would be rash to see the Magelang
man as some sort of Jeffersonian democrat with a tolerant disposition
and a belief in the perfectability of human nature. The curriculum at262
Akabri is narrow in the extreme, the horizons of its graduates de-
cidedly limited. The new generation is made up of men who carry
their historical knowledge lightly, who seek their intellectual nutri-
ment in the pages of Harion AB, the drab and unimpressive armed
forces daily, not in the works of the great political or social philoso-
phers. The Magelang graduates may not be carbon copies of the men
produced in the South Korean military institutions, but they have
some of the same impatience, the same intolerance, the same mild con-
tempt for what they see as the ineptitude of civilians and the "fail-
ure” of civilian institutions. They tend to lack, some fear, the polit-
ical skill and sophistication of the present leaders and are likely to be
less tolerant of the roles of other social and political actors. Accord-
ing to one officer,
It is possible that the new generation through impatience
and lack of sophistication will produce a new New Order
in which even the outward forms of musyawarah and
mufakat (consultation and consensus) give way to com-
mand. The new generation is inheriting a political system
they did not build. They may not be able to manipulate
it so skillfully.
Rather than attempt to mediate social and political ten-
sions the next generation might be tempted to greater co-
ercion, replacing the oligarchic style with a more thor-
oughgoing praetorianism.
This is a fear which is echoed in both military and civilian cir-
cles in Indonesia. The new breed of officer, it is feared, will be
more impatient and more intolerant, less inclined to "waste" resources
on what he sees as socially disruptive activities. The "overbearing"
attitude of many of the military men who served in the provincial
Golkar establishment prior to 1977 is seen by this group as a harbin-
ger of things to come. According to one officer associated with the
ruling group
our main worry is that the younger generation will move
in the direction of totalitarianism. They are impatient,
they want to get on with the job. They want to grasp
the power. We are worried about that. I think we are
moving towards the type of officers you see in South
Korea. The spirit of the South Korean officers is dif-
ferent from ours but perhaps our younger generation will
move in that direction—highly professional but with a
strong desire to succeed.7 8
7.	See Weatherbee, "Indonesia’s Armed Forces," pp. 32-33.
8.	Confidential communication.263
There was evidence of this attitude, this officer felt, at the
time of the student unrest in both 1974 and 1978. Younger officers,
surveying the antigovernment and anti-ABRI tone of the criticism,
had reacted with almost knee-jerk praetorianism. "We will deal much
more firmly with this sort of thing," a captain had said at the time.
"We will sweep it all away. These young people are irresponsible.
They can afford to study quietly at their parents’ cost and yet they
curse us, they curse those who are serving the country and say we
are brengsek [rotten]."9
It is too early yet to predict with any certainty the sort of po-
litical format that might commend itself to a new generation of military
officers; indeed, the current generation’s reluctance until recently to
transfer power to younger officers virtually ensures that there will be
little serious debate on this question until perhaps the late 1980s or
the early 1990s. However, it seems unlikely that a new generation of
officers, whatever forms their "military professionalism" may take, will
voluntarily relinquish the sort of role that ABRI now plays in Indone-
sian society. The officers who have graduated from Akabri in the
years since 1960 have had extensive exposure to social and political
problems while serving in territorial posts. Their experience as
Kodam commanders in areas outside Java will have sharpened their
skills in dealing not only with purely military matters but with all
manner of "sospol" matters as well. Indeed, given the nature of the
system, the stress placed on the sospol role, and the conscious rejec-
tion of those officers who fail to perform adequately in this field,
there is a process of "natural selection" in which only those with
proven political capacity are brought forward. The Magelang officers
who come to power during the 1980s and 1990s will be men in their
late forties and early fifties with up to three decades of active in-
volvement in nonmilitary matters. Moreover, strenuous efforts have
been made to ensure that they are in the correct ideological mould.
The new generation officers accept (or go through the motions of ac-
cepting) the basic tenets of New Order rule and seem committed to
the notion that ABRI has a unique and important role to play in guid-
ing and developing Indonesia. In view of this, it seems unlikely that
the new generation will lightly contemplate a major reduction in the
army’s role or feel in any sense inadequate to the task of providing
the nation with the necessary leadership. From the evidence avail-
able, their commitment to Par.casila (as presently defined) and the
1945 Constitution would appear very much in tune with the thinking
of the Suharto group. This is particularly so with those officers who
have already been given Kodam commands. Others who may be less
committed to the status quo are said to be content to bide their time,
knowing that the present leaders are already old and cannot go on
indefinitely, their penchant for frequently redefining and extending
the retirement age notwithstanding. In short, ABRI is dug in on the
commanding heights of the political, economic, and social landscape,
and there is little evidence to suggest that the new generation of of-
9. Ibid.264
ficers has any intention of lightly yielding up the vast powers they
are about to inherit.
This is not to say that the younger officers will have an easy
ride when they eventually reach the top. They will not be able to
claim—as the present leaders can—that they possess revolutionary
credentials that give them a special right to govern Indonesia, al-
though they may well seek to award themselves some such legitimacy
by claiming to be the defenders and upholders of the sacred prin-
ciples of those who fought the revolution. Furthermore, as we have
already seen, the decidedly narrow syllabus at institutions like Akabri
and Seskoad has meant that officers of the new generation have a
very narrow world view. Finally, it does not necessarily follow that
officers, simply because they have been exposed to social and political
problems on the way up, will have the sophistication to cope with the
broader question of ABRI's role in a changing society. The only
model with which they are familiar is the essentially static one found
in contemporary Indonesia. Given their limited reading and narrow
horizons, they may tend to accept the current system as the norm
and apply it rigidly in all circumstances—with disastrous conse-
quences.
It is precisely because the new generation of military leaders
will become increasingly important in the years ahead, that those con-
cerned about ABRI's role in the social-political field have been aiming
their comments as much at them as at the current military leadership,
a group which is seen, with some justification, as very set in its
ways. For the same reasons, the ruling group has sought to insulate
its prot6g6s from the various heresies that are being propounded. At
this stage, it is not possible to say how far they have been suc-
cessful in this.
In conclusion, it might be worth making the point that,
Suharto's current strength notwithstanding, the present system
should not be seen as something fixed and immutable. ABRI's role
has become increasingly institutionalized under Suharto, and the mili-
tary have come to dominate much of society. But postcolonial Indone-
sia is still in a state of flux, and the pendulum, post-Suharto, may
swing back somewhat in the other direction. For one thing, it is by
no means certain that Indonesia will throw up another military leader
with as much power as Suharto. Indonesia's second Head of State
came to the presidency through an exceptional set of circumstances,
seizing the initiative at a time when others wavered, and then secur-
ing his control over the levers of power. This gave him an oppor-
tunity to impose his own somewhat rigid views in such areas as civil-
military relations and to brush aside any officers who took a different
view. It is impossible to predict the way power may devolve to a new
president. And though it would seem reasonable to expect that
Suharto's successor would also be from the army, circumstances may
dictate that the new man is more a primus inter pares, at least ini-
tially. That, and continuing doubts within the army leadership about
the wisdom of the present course, could produce important modifica-
tions to the way in which ABRI uses its influence in society.265
With hindsight, it seems clear that the views of the New Order
"radicals” (many of them from the Siliwangi) were altogether too "pro-
gressive," and thereby unacceptable to the predominantly Javanese
officer corps, with the result that the curbing of their power has
come to appear increasingly inevitable. At the same time, it may be
argued that the pendulum, under Suharto, has swung too far in the
other direction, and that views which today compel support may be
significantly modified after Suharto's departure.
This would be unlikely to involve much more than limited ad-
justments to the system of army dominance, all officers, active and
retired, being committed to the notion of ABRI's continuing role in
the social-political field. But from the army's point of view it might
be seen to have very real advantages. If ABRI is "down in the mud"
running society, there is always the danger, as Nugroho Notosusanto
has noted, that the mud will spatter it. This has already happened.
The forces at work in one Southeast Asian nation may differ
from those at work in another. Nevertheless, the events in Thailand
in 1973 provide a warning of what can happen when a military regime
spends too much of its time seeking to perpetuate its own rule and to
contain change in society. When change eventually came in Thailand,
the results were traumatic, not least for the army, which lost not
only power and credibility, at least for the time being, but also its
own sense of self-confidence and legitimacy. There is surely, a les-
son here for Indonesia.
In 1982, ABRI's dilemma was much the same as it had been for
the previous fifteen years. The army leaders knew that the political
movement they had fashioned would not command a majority of the
votes in a free election, and yet believed, often in all good con-
science, that it was necessary for the army to rule Indonesia. This
fundamental contradiction was the Achilles' heel of the regime and the
dissembling and double talk about "constitutionalism" and following the
"rules of the game" was necessary to paper over the gap between
image and reality.
During the revolution, many officers had subscribed to the view
that the army was the Republic. In 1982, after thirty-seven years of
independence, the military leadership often acted as if the national
interests of Indonesia, the corporate interests of the army, and the
individual interests of the officer corps were identical and in no
danger of conflict. What was good for ABRI was good for the Repub-
lic. This was not necessarily so. In these circumstances, it seems
possible to suggest that one of the main legacies of the Generation of
'45 to a new generation of officers is the problem of finding a more
acceptable accommodation between military and civilian interests.GLOSSARY
Abangan — Nominally Muslim in orientation, influenced by pre-lslamic
beliefs
ABRI — Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia (Armed Forces of
the Republic of Indonesia)
Akabri — Akademi Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia (Indone-
sian Armed Forces Academy)
Asintelhankam — Assistant for Intelligence at Hankam
Asintelkopkamtib — Assistant for Intelligence at Kopkamtib
Aspri — Asisten Pribadi (Personal Assistant)
BKR — Badan Keamanan Rakyat (People's peace keeping body)
BPKI — Badan penyelidik usaha-usaha Persiapan Kemerdekaan Indo-
nesia (Body to investigate measures for the preparation of Indonesian
independence)
BPKKS — Badan Pembina Koordinasi dan Pengawasan Kegiatan Sosial
(Coordinating and Supervising Body for Social Welfare Activities)
Babinsa — Bintara Pembina Desa (NCO appointed to serve, with a
small detachment of men, in a territorial capacity at the village level)
Bakin — Badan Koordinasi Intelijen Negara (State Intelligence Coordi-
nating Body)
BAKN — Badan Administrasi Kepegawaian Negara (State Personnel
Administration Board)
Bapilu — Badan Pengendalian Pemilihan Umum (Body to Manage the
General Elections)
Barisan Sakit Hati — Sick at Heart Brigade
Bulog — Badan Urusan Logistik Nasional (National Logistics Board)
Bupati — Regent, sub-province chief
Camat — Sub-district chief
Cukong — Pejorative term for wealthy financiers, often Chinese
Dakwah — Missionary work
Dalang — Puppeteer
Dandim — Komandan Kodim (Kodim commander)
Danrem — Komandan Korem (Korem commander)
266267
Darul Islam — House of Islam, separatist movement in West Java in
the 1950’s and early 1960's
Desa — Village
Departemen Juang — Struggle Department
Dewan Hankamnas — Dewan Pertahanan Keamanan Nasional (National
Defense and Security Council)
Dewan Kekaryaan Daerah — Regional Functional Affairs Board
Dewan Pimpinan Pusat — Central Executive Board
Dewan Pimpinan Daerak Tk I — Provincial Executive Board
Dewan Pimpinan Daerak Tk II — Regency Executive Board
Dewan Pembina — Control Board
Dewan Pembina Daerah — Regional Control Board
Dewan Penasehat Daerah — Regency Advisory Board
Dewan Pertimbangan Daerah — Regional Assessment Board
DNIKS — Dewan Nasional Indonesia untuk Kesejahteraan Sosial (Indo-
nesian National Council on Social Welfare)
DPA — Dewan Pertimbangan Agung (Supreme Advisory Council)
DPR — Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (People’s Representative Council,
Parliament)
DPR-CR — Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Cotong Royong (Mutual Assis-
tance People's Representative Council)
Dwifungsi — Dual function. Doctrine which states that the Armed
Forces has both a defense and social-political role
Fosko TNI-AD — Forum Studi dan Komunikasi TNI-AD (Army Forum
for Study and Communication)
F.K.S. Purna Yudha — Forum Komunikasi dan Studi Purna Yudha
(Purna Yudha Forum for Communication and Study)
Cestapu — Cerakan September Tigapuluh (Thirtieth of September
Movement)
Golkar — Colongan Karya (Functional Groups)
Colongan istana — Palace group
CBHN — Caris-garis Besar Haluan Negara (Broad Outlines of State
Policy)
Hankam — Departemen Pertahanan-Keamanan (Department of Defense
and Security)
Hankamrata — Total People's Defense Concept
HMI — Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam (Islamic Student Association)268
IAIN — Institut Agama Islam Negerif Institute of Islamic Studies)
IPDN — Institut Pemerintahan Dalam Neaeri (Civil Service Institute of
the Department of Home Affairs)
IPKI — Ikatan Pendukung Kemerdekaan Indonesia (League of Up-
holders of Indonesian Independence)
Kabupaten — Regency
Kapusintelstrat — Head of the Strategic Intelligence Center
Karyawan — Military man serving in nonmilitary capacity
Kaskar — Chief of Staff for Functional Affairs
Kaspri Pangad — Chief of Staff of the Personal Secretariat of the
Army Commander
Kebatinan — Javanese mystic beliefs
Kecamatan — District
Kekaryaan — Nonmilitary, or functional
Kerakyatan — Popular sovereignty
Khutbah — Sermons
Kodam — Komando Daerah Militer (Regional Military Command)
Kodim — Komando Distrik Militer (District Military Command)
Komando Jihad — Holy War Command
Kopassandha — Army para-commando unit, formerly known as the
RPKAD
Kopkamtib — Komando Operasi Pemulihan Keamanan dan Ketertiban
(Operational Command for the Restoration of Security and Order)
Koramil — Komando Rayon Militer (Military Precinct Command). A
force of 10-15 men at local level
Korem — Komando Resort Militer (subprovince Military Resort Com-
mand)
Korpri — Korps Karyawan Pegawai Republik Indonesia (Civil Ser-
vants' Corps of the Republic of Indonesia)
Kosgoro — Koperasi Serba Usaha Gotong Royong (All-Purpose Mutual
Help Cooperatives)
Kostrad — Komando Cadangan Strategis Angkatan Darat (Army Stra-
tegic Reserve Command)
Kotoe — Komando Tertinggi Operasi Ekonomi (Supreme Command for
Economic Operations)
Kowilhan — Komando Wilayah Pertahanan (Regional Defense Command)
KNIL — Koninklijk Nederlands Indisch Leger (Royal Netherlands
Indies Army)269
Kraton — Palace, court
Laksusda — Pelaksana Khusus Daerah (Special Executor of Kopkamtib
in the Regions}
Liga Demokrasi — Democratic League
LKB — Lembaga Kesadaran Berkonstitusi (Institute of Constitutional
Awareness)
Leppenas — Lembaga Penunjang Pembangunan Nasiona, (Institute of
the Supporters of National Development)
Lurah — Village headman
Malari — Malapetaka Januari (January Disaster)
Manipol — Manifesto Politik (Political Manifesto)
Masyumi — Majelis Syuro Muslimin Indonesia (Council of Indonesian
Muslim Associations)
Menhankam — Minister of Defense
MKGR — Musyawarah Kekeluargaan Gotong Royong (Family Mutual
Help Association)
MPR — Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat (People’s Consultative Assem-
bly)
MPRS — Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat Sementara (Provisional Peo-
ple's Consultative Assembly)
MUI — Majelis Ulama Indonesia (Indonesian Ulamas Council)
Muspida — Musyawarah Pimpinan Daerah (Regional Leadership Coun-
cil)
Nasakom — nasionalis, agama, komunis (nationalist, religious, Commu-
nist)
Nefos — New Emerging Forces
Negara Islam Indonesia — Islamic State of Indonesia. Proclaimed by
the Darul Islam leader S. M. Kartosuwirjo in August 1949
Nekolim — neokolonialisme, kolonialisme, imperialisme (neocolonialism,
colonialism, imperialism)
NU — Nahdatul Ulama (Muslim Scholars Party)
Oldefos — Old Established Forces
Opsus — Operasi Khusus (Special Operations)
Opsgalangan — Operasi galangan (Guidance operations)
Pancasila — Five principles. State philosophy formulated by Sukarno
in 1945
Pangab — Commander of the Armed Forces
Pangad — Army commander270
Pangdam — Panglima Kodam (Military commander)
Pangkopkamtib — Commander of Kopkamtib
Panglima — Military commander
Pembina Utama — Chief Controller. Pembina and Pembinaan are pecu-
liar army terms from the early 1960s. ’’Pembina” is sometimes trans-
lated as "supervisor” but the meaning is more "shaper,” "moulder,"
"controller" (in the intelligence sense)
Penguasa Perang — Martial Law Authority Holder
Penugaskaryaan — The placing of an active military man in a nomi-
nally civilian position, often as a sinecure
Penyaluran — The process of moving a military man into a civilian
position prior to retirement
Pepabri — Persatuan Purnawirawan Angkatan Bersenjata Republik In-
donesia (Association of Retired Members of the Indonesian Armed
Forces)
Pepelrada — Penguasa Pelaksanaan Dwikora Daerah (Regional Au-
thority to Implement Dwikora)
Peperti — Penguasa Perang Tertinggi (Supreme War Authority)
Perbantuan — The process of attaching a military man to a civilian
position on a short term basis to perform a particular task
Peta — Pembela Tanah Air (Defenders of the Fatherland)
Perusahaan daerah — Regional enterprises
PDI — Partai Demokrasi Indonesia (Indonesian Democratic Party)
PKI —. Partai Komunis Indonesia (Indonesian Communist Party)
PN — Perusahaan Negara (state corporation)
PNI — Partai Nasional Indonesia (Indonesian National Party)
PPP — Partai Persatuan Pembangunan (United Development Party)
PPP-AD — Pusat Pendidikan Perwiraan-Angk.atan Darat (Army
Officers Training Centre)
PRRI — Pemerintah Revolusioner Republik Indonesia (Revolutionary
Government of the Republic of Indonesia)
PSI — Partai Sosialis Indonesia (Indonesian Socialist Party)
PSI I — Partai Sarekat Islam Indonesia (Indonesian Islamic Union
Party)
PT — Perusahaan Terbatas (limited company)
Rapim ABRI — Rapat Pemimpin (ABRI Commanders Call)
Rapat Gubernur — Governor’s Meeting271
RPKAD — Resimen Para Komando Angkatan Darat (Army Para-
Commando Regiment)
Santri — Devout Muslim
Sapta Marga — Seven Pledges
Satgasintel — Satuan Tugas Intelijen (Intelligence Task Unit)
Sekber-Golkar — Sekretariat Bersama Colongan Karya (Joint
Secretariat of Functional Groups)
Sekwilda — Sekretariat Wilayah Daerah (Regency secretary)
Semangat — Revolutionary ardor, fighting spirit
Seskoad — Sekolah Staf Komando Angkatan Darat (Army Staff and
Command School)
Seskogab — Sekolah Staf dan Komando Cabungan (Joint Services’
Staff and Command School)
SOKSI — Sentral Organisasi Karyawan Sosialis Indonesia (Centra, Or-
ganization of Indonesian Socialist Workers)
Sospo, — Social-politica, affairs
Spri — Staf Pribadi (Persona, Staff)
Syariah — Islamic law
Team Poleksos — Political, Economic and Social Team
TKR — Tentara Keamanan Rakyat (People’s Peacekeeping Army), Oc-
tober 5, 1945-January 7, 1946
TN, — Tentara Nasional Indonesia (Indonesian National Army), since
June 3, 1947
USDEK — Undang-undang Dasar 45, Sosialisme a ,a Indonesia,
Demokrasi Terpimpin, Ekonomi Terpimpin Kepribadian Indonesia (1945
Constitution, Indonesian Socialism, Guided Democracy, Guided
Economy, Indonesian Personality)
Wanbinda — Dewan Pengurus Daerah (Regional Executive Board)
Wanbintu — Dewan Pembina Daerah — Tingkat 1 (Regional Super-
visory Board)
Wanbinpus — Dewan Pembina Pusat (Central Supervisory Board)
Yayasan Harapan Kita — Our Hope Foundation
YLKB — Yayasan Lembaga Kesadaran Berkonstitusi (Foundation for
the Institute of Constitutional Awareness)NAME INDEX
Abdulkadir Besar: 61-62, 94, 113-14, 116, 119-20, 124 n.34, 189,
190 n.6, 192, 255
Abimanju: 67-68, 86, 91 , 222 n, 237 n, 238
Abu Darda: 57
"Abu Firman" (pen name): 80, 81 n.57
Achir: 124 n.33
Achmadi: 97
Adjie, Ibrahim: 3, 142, 226 n
Agus Prasmono: 67, 86, 109, 236, 241
Aidit, D. N.:	215, 226
Alamsjah Ratu Perwiranegara: 22-23, 35, 77-79, 80 n.54, 98, 127-
28, 208, 224
Ali Murtopo: 13, 16, 20-25, 29-32, 36, 41-42, 44 n.27, 49-52, 54
n.7, 56n, 57-59, 62n, 70-73, 79, 98, 113, 122, 127-28, 130 n.52
136, 151, 159-60, 169-70, 204, 208, 240, 252, 257
Ali Sadikin: x, 75, 102, 105-08, 143-44, 147, 149-50, 162, 170,
183, 187, 218 n, 235, 237, 250, 254
Ali Said: 21, 182
Ali Wardhana (Dr.):	17
Amin Iskandar: 106, 163
Amir Machmud: 20-21 , 24, 25 n.24, 47, 49, 85, 122, 127-28, 136,
180, 240-41
Amir Murtono: 38 n.12, 48-49, 130 n.52, 149, 151
Anwar Haryono (Dr.):	102, 185
Arif Rachman: 102	n	
Ateng Jailani: 57		
Awaluddin Djamin:	124 n	.33
Awan Karmawan Bu	rhan :	153
Azis Saleh: 102, 1	04-05,	108,
Batubara, A.:	69	n.33	
Batubara, Cosmas:	49	
272273
Beutler, Warwick (Radio Australia correspondent): 167 n.31 , 208 n
Brori Mansjur: 69 n.33
Broto Hamidjojo: 67, 109, 236
Brotosewoyo: 67, 69 n.33, 109, 236
Burhanuddin Harahap. See Harahap, Burhanuddin
Bustanil Arifin:
Chalid Mawardi:
Charis Suhud.
Chandra Hasan:
21 n, 127, 177-79
163
See Suhud, Charis
67, 109, 236, 241
Chris Siner Key Timu. See Siner Key Timu, Chris
Daan Jahja: 67, 91, 94, 109, 119, 171 , 236, 238, 254
Danu Subroto: 57
Darjatmo: 20, 27, 49, 61 , 86, 105, 107, 124, 127-28, 166, 181 ,
190-91, 201-04, 241
Darmojuwono, Cardinal Justinius: 245
Daud Beureueh: 175
Daud Jusuf: 185
De Gaulle: 227
Des Alwi: 58
Dewantoro, Ki Hadjar (Suwardi Surianingrat):	175
Dharsono, H. R.: x, 25 n.22, , 33, 87-88, 91-92, 94, 101 , 109, 119
122, 137, 156, 162, 166 n.26, 171-72, 183-84, 235, 236, 238, 242
43, 245, 250, 253-56
Dipo Alam: 75, 102 n
Djatikusumo, C. P. H.: x, 67-68, 70, 86 n.70, 91-94, 96-97, 109,
116, 119, 171, 235-36, 241, 254-55
Djokosutono, Prof.: 2 n.3, 229, 231 n.54
Djokosuwarno SH (Haji Drs.) (alias): 244
Djuanda Kartawidjaja (,r.):	110
Djuhartono: 69 n.33
Fachruddin, H. A. R.:	163
Franco General Francisco: 220
Fraser, Malcolm (Prime Minister of Australia): 167
Catot Tarunamihardja SH: 70-71
Coebbels, Joseph: 226274
Cunarso: 152-53
Habibie, J. B. (Dr.):	253
Hadisubeno: 44 n.27
Hadjisarosa, Purnomosidi (Dr.):	127
Hamengku Buwono IX: 48 n.34, 84 n.63, 103-04, 160
Harahap, Burhanuddin: 162-63, 184
Hardjanto: 141
Harisugiman: 149
Harsoyo: 82
Hartini (Sukarno's third wife): 3 n
Harun Sohar: 67, 69 n.33, 109, 236, 254
Harun Zain (Drs.):	127
Hasyim Ning: 77
Hatta, Mohammad (Dr.): xi, 7, 11 , 83, 97, 102-06, 162, 213, 222 n
Hidayat Martaatmaja: 237
Hidayat Mukmin (Drs.):	191-93
Himawan Sutanto: 57, 83
Hindenburg: 227
Hugeng Imam Santoso: x, 102, 105, 108, 162, 168-70, 185, 235, 237,
243-45, 247-48, 250, 252, 254
Husein, Ahmad: 58, 242
Ibnu Subroto: 69 n.33
Ibnu Sutowo: 21 , 23, 70, 159, 236, 246
Idham Chalid: 219
Imam Waluyo: 97
Isa Edris: 237
Ishak Djuarsa: 236, 243, 245, 246 n, 250, 253-55
Iskandar Ranuwihardjo: 67, 109, 236, 254
Iskandar Widyapranata. See Widyapranata, Iskandar
Ismail, Jusuf (Dr.):	97
Ismail Pranoto bin Suleiman, Haji (or Hispran): 57, 58 n.16
Ismai, Saleh: 21, 192 n.12
Isman, Mas: 69 n.33, 130
Isnaeni, Mohammad: 107275
Jasin, Mohammad: x, 67, 86, 91-92, 109, 153, 162, 164-67, 170, 171
n.40, 172 n.42, 174-83, 235-36, 241, 243, 245, 248-50, 254-55
Jono Hatmodjo, Raden Mas: 26
Judilherry Justam (Dr.):	185
Jusuf, Mohammad: x-xi, 23-26, 27 n.24, 28 n.27, 79, 80 n.54, 85,
90-91, 100-01, 122-25, 130 n.52, 133, 135-49, 151-56, 158-59, 161,
165, 167-68, 171, 182, 189-91, 193, 196, 201 n.29, 202, 204, 224,
241, 255
Juwono Sudarsono (Dr.):	154
Kadar Salihat: 57
Kamal, H. M.:	103, 106, 235, 237
Kamil, Njak Adam: 69 n.33
Kanter, E. J.:	21
Kartakusuma, M. R.:	53-54, 55 n.7
Kartosuwirjo, S. M.:	8, 57
Kasimo, Ignatius Joseph: 29
Kasman Singodimedjo (Dr.):	8 n.10, 185
Kawilarang, Alex: x, 11 , 67-68, 86, 91 , 109, 1 11 , 142, 155, 235-36,
238-43, 247-48, 255
Kemal, Mustapha: 227
Kemal Idris: 33, 67, 87, 235, 238, 242-43, 245, 255-56
Kusumaatmadja, Mochtar (Dr.):	136, 253
Kusumaatmadja, Sarwono lr.: 107, 141
Liem Sioe Liong: 159
Lopulisa, Leo: 24 n.22
Lubis,	Mochtar:	102,	104, 106
Lubis, Nazir: 106
Lubis,	Nuddin:	102
Lubis,	Zulkifli:	242
Makmun Murod:	82,	84
Malik, Adam: 97-99, 160, 186, 207, 244, 249
Malik, Mrs. Nelly Adam: 186, 207
Manihuruk, A. E.:	49
Mantik, G. H.:	218 n
Marpaung, August: 21
Masahwa, Ali: 140276
Mashuri: 107, 128
Masykur, K. H.:	107
Mokoginta, H. A. J.: x, 67-68, 86, 91 , 94, 100, 102, 105, 107, 109-
10, 116, 119-20, 151-52, 161-62, 171, 235-37, 239-41, 247, 254-56
Muamil Effendy: 67, 109, 236, 238, 254
Mudjono: 21, 127
Mulia, Datuk R. SH: 29 n.28
Muljadi Djojomartono: 8 n.10
Muljosudjono: 69 n.33
Munadi: 67, 100-02, 109, 236, 238, 246
Munasir, H. M.:	141
Murdani, Benny: 20, 23-29, 60 n.22, 73, 122, 135-36, 174, 183, 208,
241, 248-50
Murtopo, Ali. See Ali Murtopo
Musaddad, K. H. Anwar: 163
Nalapraja, Eddy: 102 n
Napitupulu, David: 49, 149
Nasution, A. H.: x-xi, xiii, 2-4, 6, 38, 47, 53 n.1, 54, 55 n.7-8,
60-61, 62 n, 68, 70-71, 81-83, 84 n.63, 86 n.69, 87 n.72, 89 n.78,
90, 100-06, 108, 110-11 , 117, 119-20, 122, 125, 134, 155-56, 162,
168, 171 n.39, 174 n.2, 175, 176 n.8, 182, 184, 186-87, 189, 195
n.20, 202, 205-35, 237-42, 247-52, 254-56
Nasution, Mrs.: 184, 186, 207
Natsir, Mohammad: 9, 57-58, 162-63, 168, 184-85, 248, 254
Nazir, Admiral: 55 n.8, 102-03, 110, 234-35, 237
Nguyen Co Thach: 136 n
Nichlany Sudarjo: 28 n.28, 184 n.34
Njoto: 71
Nugroho Notosusanto: 123 n, 188, 190 n.6, 191-93, 195, 201 n.30,
202-04, 205 n.16, 265
Nurbani Yusuf: 102
Nurris, Anwar: 151
Oejeng Suwargana: 55 n.7, 102, 110
Paku Buwono X: 67
Panggabean, Maraden: 20, 24, 62 n, 68, 69 n.33, 70, 84-87, 90 n.3,
127-28, 130 n.52, 132, 136, 241, 244-45277
Pardjaman, Djambir: 130 n.52
Park Chung Hee (President): 27, 220
Pirngadi Sudarto: 69 n.33 Poniman: xi, 113, 161-62, 172	
Pranoto Reksosamudro:	207
Rachmat Mulyomiseno:	106
Radius Prawiro (Drs.)	:	127-28
Rahardjodikromo: 69 n.33	
Ramly, Abdul Rahman:	23
Rasyid, Abdul Karim:	69
Ratulangi, Sam (Dr.):	7 n.9
Rendra, W. S.:	54	
Ridwan Saidi: 141
Roem, Mohamad: 58
Rudjito: 26
Ruslan Abdulgani: 54, 55 n.7
Sadikin, Ali. See Ali Sadikin
Sadikin, H.:	237-38
Sadli, Mohammad (Dr.):	17
Sahulata, J. J.:	235, 237
Sajidiman Surjohadiprodjo: 97, 114, 119-22, 246, 255
Salim, Emil (Dr.):	17, 127
Sanusi Hardjadinata:	102, 254
Sapardjo: 49, 127
Sardjono: 69 n.33
Sarwo Edhie Wibowo: 124 n.33
Satari, A. M. (Prof.): 28 n.28, 93
Satrio: 69
Sawito Kartowibowo: 83, 169 n.35, 239, 245
Seda, Frans (Drs.):	29, 102
Siagian, Sabam: 79
Simatupang, T. B.:	9-10, 68, 200, 226-28, 235, 239-42, 248, 255
Simbolon, Maluddin: 11 , 58, 242
Siner Key Timu, Chris (Drs.):	102, 185278
Singedekane: 69 n.33
Sirait, Sabam: 102, 141
Sitorus: 82
Sjafruddin Prawiranegara: 162-63, 184
Slamet: 100, 172
Slamet Bratanata: 102-03, 105, 169, 171 , 172 n.42, 184, 254
Slamet Danusudirjo: 124 n.33
Solichin Gautama Purwanegara: 84 n.61, 124 n.33, 130 n.52, 165 n
Somba, Daniel Julius: 58 n.15
Sroehardojo: 67
Subardjo SH, Achmad: 102
Subiyono SH: 67, 191-93
Subroto (Dr.):	17
Subroto (Maj. Gen.): 244
Sudarman, R. Md.: 69 n.33
Sudarsono Hadisaputro (Prof.): 127
Sudarto: 69 n.33, 130 n.52
Sudharmono: 20-21 , 49, 79, 127-28, 241 , 244
Sudirman (late General): 8 n.10, 53, 60, 63, 65, 67-68, 95, 100,
120, 142-43, 209, 210 n.9, 221-23, 240
Sudirman, R.: x, 67-68, 86, 91, 100, 104-05, 109, 119, 121-22, 162,
171-72, 235-36, 241, 247, 254-56
Sudjono Humardhani: 21 n.22-23, 127
Sudomo: xi, 20, 23-27, 29, 41-42, 56, 58 n.16, 76, 79, 88, 101 , 106
121 n.30, 122, 125, 130 n.52, 134-36, 140, 146-49, 152-54, 157
161-62, 165, 167-69, 234, 240, 248-49
Sugandhi: 130, 149
Sugianto: 148 n.45, 149, 153
Sugih Arto: 67, 91, 100, 109, 149, 172 n.43, 236, 244-46, 255
Suhardi: 69 n.33
Suhardiman: 130
Suharto (President): ix, xi-xiii, 3-4, 6, 13-17, 20-38, 40-42, 47-54,
56, 58-59, 62 n, 66, 69-85, 89, 90 n.3, 92-93, 98, 100-01, 103-04
106, 110-11, 118, 120-38, 140, 145-48, 150-51, 154-71, 175, 177-79
181-85, 187, 190-92, 194-95, 197, 200-08, 211-12, 215-20, 224, 227
232, 234-35, 238-40, 243-49, 252-57, 259, 263-64
Suharto, Pitut: 49, 58-59279
Suharto, Sigit: 77, 165-66
Suharto, Tien (Madame Suharto): 21 n, 26, 76-77, 155, 160, 169,
178, 185-86, 244-45
Suhud, Charis: 121, 123 n, 127, 145, 190 n.6, 191-92, 201, 203-04,
246, 255
Sujatmo: 69
Sujono Ongko: 69 n.33
Sukanda Bratamenggala: 67, 109, 236
Sukardi: 149, 152
Sukarno: 1 , 3-7, 10-11 , 14-15, 21 , 34, 36 n, 39-40, 53 n.1, 58, 63,
68, 71, 81 n.56, 85, 111 , 120, 124 n.34, 146-47, 154 n.66, 155
162, 168, 182, 185, 187, 193, 194 n.18, 207-08, 210 n.9, 211, 215
16, 222, 224 n, 226 n, 230-32, 235, 241-43
Sukendro, Achmad: x, 67-73, 86, 91-92, 94, 97, 99-101 , 104 n.39,
109, 111, 116, 119, 122, 126, 134, 171-73, 183-84, 186-87, 235-36
238, 241-42, 254-55
Sultan of Yogyakarta. See Hamengku Buwono IX
Sumarlin, J. B. (Dr.):	127-28
Sumitro: 13, 20 n.16, 21 , 23-24, 29 n.28, 33-34, 35 n.8, 37, 41
n.19, 55, 72-73, 85 n.65, 121-22, 134, 136, 144-45, 147, 159, 175
76, 178 n.14, 183, 190 n.6, 191 n.7 6 9, 197, 201, 202 n.30, 214
217, 219 n.27, 225, 226 n, 241, 243, 245-46, 250-53
Sumitro Djojohadikusumo (Dr.):	75-76, 180
Sumual, H. N. V.:	11, 58
Sunandar Prijosudarmo: 38 n.12, 127, 218 n
Sunario (Prof.): 102, 106
Sunitioso: 69 n.33
Supardjo Rustam: 72, 101
Suprapto, R.:	61, 69 n.33, 222 n
Suprayogi: 55 n.8
Surachman: 226 n
Surakhmad: 237
Surjo Wirjohadiputro: 21 n, 23
Surono Reksodimedjo: 24 n.22, 38 n.12, 83-84, 90 n.3, 97, 124,
127-28, 178-79, 181, 186, 192, 201 n.29, 241
Suryosumpeno: 101
Sutami: 166 n.26280
Sutopo Juwono: x, 21, 29 n.28, 30, 56, 114, 119, 121-22, 134, 155,
159, 161, 175, 190 n.6, 200-01, 203-04, 246, 255
Suwardjono Surjaningrat (Dr.):	180
Suwarto: 2, 203 n.35
Suyitno Sukirno: 105, 158, 163 n.21, 234-35, 237
Tambunan SH, A. S. S.:	191-93
Tanjung, Syufri Helmi: 106
Tarigan, Jamaluddin: 106
Tarmudji, Moch.: 149
Tjahjadi, Robby: 244
Umar Wirahadikusumah: 70, 89 n.78, 90 n.3, 124 n.34, 178, 180
Grip Sumohardjo: 67, 222 n
Usep Ranuwidjaja SH: 106
von Schirach, Baldur: 226-27
Wanandi, Jusuf (Liem Bian Kie): 49, 51-52, 72 n.38, 127 n.41, 171
n.40, 208
Warouw: 11
Wibisono, Jusuf: 9
Widjojo Nitisastro (Dr.):	17, 48 n.34, 127-28
Widjojo Sujono: 101 , 124, 255
Widodo: x-xi, 72-75, 85-86, 88-90, 92-94, 97, 99-101, 113, 118-19,
120 n.23, 121 , 124-25, 134, 136-39, 148, 155-56, 159, 161 n.14
172, 181 , 189, 193, 241 , 246, 255
Widyapranata, Iskandar: 86-87
Wijogo Atmodarminto: 27 n.25
Wijono: 69 n.33
Wilopo SH: 106
Witarmin: 82, 218 n
Yani, Achmad: 3, 71 , 74, 87 n.73, 124 n.34, 168, 207, 223
Yani, Mrs. (widow of Gen. Achmad Yani): 87 n.73
Yap Thiam Hien: 244
Yoga Sugama: 20, 22-29, 41-42, 73, 79, 122, 130 n.52, 135-36,
167-69, 183, 204, 240, 248, 250-51
Yogie Suardi Memet: 26, 27, 136
Zainal Abidin: 57
Zulkarnain Jabar: 102 n