BIOGRAFI ir Soekarno

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         BIOGRAFI IR.SOEKARNO

   Soekarno's name was sometimes spelled Soekarno,and indonesians also remember him as bung Karno. Like many javanese people, he had just one name.

   He was born into the family of a javanese nobleman. He was admitted into a Dutch run school before being sent to secondary school in Surabaya in 1921,he moved to the Technische hoogeschool te bandoeng in Bandung.

   When the Partai Nasional Indonesia (Indonesian Independen Movement Party) was founded in 1927, Soekarno became its leader. Even at this early stage he believed Japan would commence a war againts the imperialist westerern powers in the Far East and Java would then be able to gain its independence with Japan's aid. The Dutch Colonial authorities arrested him in 1929 for his poliical activities and he was sentenced to two years in prison . His imprisonment turned him into a Hero . Throughout the 1930s , he was constantly in conflict with the Colonial authorities and was in and out of jail. In fact, he was in prison when the Japanese occupied the archipelago in 1942.

   During World War two the indigenous Indonesian forces cooperated with Japanese against the Dutch. In one area ,however ,the Japanese found resistance;the indonesians would not help in the supply of aviation fuel. The Japanese became increasingly desperate and in an effort to gain local assistance brought Soekarno back to Jakarta. After independence, he refused to talk about his collaboration activities during the war, however, after his return the Japanese got their aviation fuel and were able to raise a number of volunteer work gangs and groups of Japanese volunteer army troops. By the middle of 1945 there were over two million locals standing alongside the Japanese and determined to defeat any attempt by Allied forces to re-take Java.

   Following the Japanese surrender,and in an effort to maximize Allied problems, the regional Javanese commander, Marshal Terauchi, summoned Indonesian leaders to meet him and instructed them to declare independence Soekarno was at first cautious, but on 17 August 1945 he and Mohammad Hatta did indeed do just that and declared independence.

   He then set about the task of producing a constitution for the new nation. His Pancasila (five pillars) had elements of marxism, nationalism, and Islam. Unfortunately, this constitution produced chaos in the Indonesian parliament and proved unworkable. This resulted in factional in-fighting between Indonesian groups at a time whe the Dutch were attempting to re-estabilsh Colonial rule. Dutch forces captured Soekarno in 1948, but he was released after a year when a ceasefire came into effect.

   Even after the Dutch had left Soekarno found It difficult to again universal acceptance of his government in all arease of Indonesia. Many regions and factions craved their own independence and he had to supress these by the use of military force. There were further unrest through the 1950s and attemped military coups were made againts him in 1956.

   In an effort to restore order to his country he laid down what he called guided democracy. He maintsined a multiparty parliament be weilded progressively more executive powers.

   During the second half of the 1950s he came to rely increasingly on the army and the support of the PKI-the Communist Party of Indonesia to remain in power. In an attempt to quell dissent he imposed government control over media and book publishing. He also enacted a series of discriminatory laws againts Chinese Indonesia.

   In July 1959, he dissolved parliament and took personal control as prime ministter and head of state. He called the new systeem of government-by-decree manifesto politik or manipol.

   At the same time as he moved againts ethnic Chinese citizens in his own country he strengthened international ties with Communist China. He also beban to recive more aid from Soviet Rusia. He skillfully played this hand because his apparent leftward drift mean that the American government redoubled its offers of aid in an attempt to keep him in the non aligned camp politically and favourably disposed to the West more gennerally.

   He strongly opposed the british-supported Federation of Malaysia. He considered It a neocolonialist plot to advance British interests in the region. When the federated state came into being in September 1963 this led to the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation. Amerika withdrew its aid. Soekarno withdrew Indonesia from the United Nations security Council in 1965 and Malaysia took over the seat.

   At the same time as these political events were taking place he became ill and was secretly diagnoses with kidney disease.

   On the morning of October 1, 1965 members of Soekarno's guard unit kidnapped and murdered six anti-Communist generals. Lieutenant-General Soeharto was not targeted by this Assassination group. The resulting crisis sparked a crack down on the Indonesian Communist Party and a purge againts its members.