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The passing of my friend, Sarwono
In his retirement from public office, Sarwono had a particular interest in environmental issues, and he was highly respected by the current environment and forestry minister, Siti Nurbaya Bakar, to whom he offered his invaluable advice.
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Mourners pray in front of the body of former environment minister Sarwono Kusumaatmadja at the Manggala Wanabakti Building on the premises of the Environment and Forestry Ministry in Senayan, Jakarta, on May 28.
(Antara/Sugiharto Purnama)
O
n Friday afternoon, May 26, I was shocked and saddened by a telephone call from my son informing me that Sarwono Kusumaatmadja had passed away at a hospital in Penang, Malaysia. Lung cancer had ended his life journey two months short of his 80th birthday.
Not knowing about his illness before, I had actually planned to invite him to the office for a get-together with some mutual friends to catch up and chat about current affairs, both domestic and international.
Before the outbreak of COVID-19, we did this more often, and Sarwono always came. We always enjoyed his wealth of knowledge, his wit and his sense of humor. His sudden departure left a void as I remembered our friendship and our one-time partnership as board members of Golkar, where he served as secretary-general under the chairmanship of the late Lt. Gen. Sudharmono.
My friendship with Sarwono dated back to the mid-1960s when he was a student activist at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and I was a lecturer at the University of Indonesia Faculty of Law in Jakarta. Sarwono’s broad interests spanned politics, economics, the environment, youth, art, culture and international affairs.
In his retirement from public office, Sarwono had a particular interest in environmental issues, and he was highly respected by the current environment and forestry minister, Siti Nurbaya Bakar, to whom he offered his invaluable advice. Minister Siti Nurbaya visited Sarwono at the Penang Hospital on Friday, and he passed away shortly thereafter.
As a fellow Golkar board member, I had the chance to closely watch how Sarwono’s relationship with chairman Sudharmono blossomed at the same time his relationship with the late Gen. Benny Moerdani did. Interestingly, being a principled person, Sarwono managed to steer his position well between those two generals, who did not see eye-to-eye on certain national issues.
Following his time as Golkar’s secretary-general, Sarwono served as the environment minister in one of Soeharto’s cabinets and as the fisheries minister during the Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid administration. Sarwono was the second cabinet minister in the family, following in the footsteps of his brother, former foreign minister Mochtar Kusumaatmadja.
