Figure 1.--Sukarn's had nine wives and many children. Here he is with Nehru and Indira Ghandi along with two of his children, Megawati and Guntur (about 1949). Sukarno identified with Indoinesian Communists and Third World leaders like Castro and Tito. They unlike Nehru were not spokesmen for democracy. Megawati would become a force in Indonesian politics four decades later, largely because her father untainted by military rule was seen as a national hero. Ironically her main issue was the return to democracy from military rule. Democracy was something in which her father showed no real interest.

The Army-dominated Indonesian Parliament met to consuder a new election (November 1998). On the streets, students were demanding immediate elections. The student demands that military appointees to Parliament be ended were ignored in Parliament--understandable be cause military appointees realized that they could not win actual elections. Three days of increasingly violent rioting and skirmishing with the military riot squds peaked (November 13). The students marched on the thorougly discredited Parliament. Many impoverished people koined the students. The resulting clashes with the Army riot squads left 12 dead and hundreds wounded. The well-defended Parliament was not the only target. The mostly Muslim mobs took on a well established pattern in Muslim countries. They began to target non-Muslim Indonesians, meaning Christians and Chinese. They began attacking and burning churches in Jakarta. Christians througout the country were outraged. In areas where Christians were more numerous, especially eastern Indonesia, Christians began attacked mosques. Rioting in West Timor was soon followed by Muslim-Christian violence in Maluku and Kalimantan. Indonesiais avast archipeligo doninated by the heavily populasted islands of Sumatra and Java. As a result there were many independence-minded regions, especailly Aceh, Irian Jaya, and East Timor. The violence and the unraveling central givernment fueled separtist feeling. This led to more violence. Despite the ongoing instability, Indonesia moved toward real democratic elections. The first democratic election campaigm in 40 years proved to be jouous national celevtation (June 1999). The Army had attempted to divide the PDI in 1993 and end Megawati Soekarnoputri's political career. Instead she had helped orgnize the Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI-P) which became more important than the original PDI the Government had endorsed. Megawati was the most popular politician in Indonesia, an impressive achievement in the face of Government opposition and until 1998 control of the media as well as. And it is rare in a Muslim-majority country for a woman to achieve politican prominance. Usually it occurs when a woman is related to apopular politician. And this was the case of Megawati. She was one of Sukarno's daughters. And because Soeharto had removed Sukarno from power (1967), the former strong man and PKI ally was now a popular hero. Indonesia held its first democratic election since 1955 (October 1999). Megawati and her PDI-P, however, only won a third of the vote. The Government Golkar Party, without the benefit of a rigged voting had its vote tally plummet from over 70 percent to little more than 20 percent. Although Megawati received the greates number of votes, a coalition of other parties had the votes to deny her the presidency. The People’s Consultative Assembly elected Abdurrahman Wahid as the new president and Megawati as vice president (October 20).

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Created: 3:34 AM 4/24/2017
Last updated: 3:34 AM 4/24/2017