TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Sukarno, Pancasila and his leftist thinking
Change Size
Milestone: Coordinating Human Development and Culture Minister Puan Maharani (left) inspects a bronze statue of her grandfather and the country’s first president Sukarno at Banceuy penitentiary in Bandung on Wednesday, witnessed by her mother and former president Megawati Soekarnoputri (second left) and President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. (JP/Arya Dipa)
I
ndonesians on Monday celebrated 115 years since the birth of the country’s first president, Sukarno, best remembered as a national hero who proclaimed independence more than 70 years ago, but often forgotten as a prominent leftist thinker and revolutionary.
Sukarno’s presidency ran from 1945 to 1966. He reinstated the 1945 Constitution by presidential decree in July 1959 to start the era of guided democracy. He established a new legislature and the Provisional People's Consultative Assembly (MPRS) as the highest legislative authority, which appointed him president for life.
The kidnapping and murder of six Army generals on Sept. 30, 1965, led to a purge of Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) members, sympathizers and their families, and the downfall of Sukarno's regime in 1966.
On Tuesday, leftist publication Indoprogress released an online book entitled Sukarno, Marxism and the Dangers of Fossilization, containing articles related to Sukarno’s thoughts and ideas on developing the nation.
Bonnie Triyana, chief editor of Historia magazine, said in a foreword to the book that young people often idolized Sukarno without really understanding the significance of the former president’s ideas.
“Sukarno is not only a poster in a rented room, sticker on the rear window of an angkot [public minivan], graffiti on a city wall, or a biological father to his children. He was a great thinker who produced the idea of independence and a political activist who devoted his life to national liberation,” Triyana said.
Sukarno was born on June 6, 1901. To commemorate the 115th anniversary of his birth on Monday, many people posted his image and quotes on social media, such as: “Don’t forget history” and “Give me 10 young men, I'll shake the world”.
However, few netizens mentioned Sukarno’s thoughts on leftist movements.
Meanwhile, retired military generals held a national symposium on June 1 to 2 to oppose the feared revival of communism in the country. The event was set up to challenge a previous symposium in April, which was conducted to discuss a resolution to the 1965 tragedy.
In the counter-symposium, almost all speakers claimed that communism, Marxism and Leninism were threats to Pancasila, saying the ideologies could lead people to become atheists.
They also said people should not forget the struggle of Sukarno in the past to establish Pancasila as the state's five philosophical foundations, although some historians have stated that Pancasila cannot be separated from Sukarno's idea of establishing a socialist society.
In an article in the book Sukarno is a Leftist Marxist, writer Bonnie Setiawan said Sukarno was not only a nationalist, but also a socialist revolutionary. He said Sukarno was trying to create a society without capitalism and imperialism through the Five Talismans of the Revolution (Panca Azimat Revolusi).
The first talisman was a political concept dubbed Nasakom, or the revolutionary unity of nationalism, religion and communism. The second was Pancasila as the country’s national ideology. Other talismans included a manifesto of political reorganization, the 1945 Constitution and the ideals of Indonesian socialism and sovereignty.
“So the story or episode of Bung Karno was about the struggle to uphold socialism, not only limited to the independence of Indonesia or nationalism,” Setiawan said.
Conversely, in an article titled Bung Karno and the Dangers of Fossilization, Indonesianist Benedict Anderson said Sukarno’s ideas had been fossilized, especially after the president’s death on June 21, 1970, as many people had blindly idolized him and misused his name for political interests.
“This conclusion does not mean that Bung Karno’s views and values have become obsolete, but those thoughts need to be contemplated with a critical attitude and historical awareness, considering the long period between the current era and Bung Karno’s era,” stated Anderson, who died last year aged 79. (vps/bbn)
