Wanted: A Magician

At National Heroes Cemetery, outside Djakarta, the coffins of the six slain generals were draped with the red-and-white colors of the Indonesian flag. Twenty tanks lined the approach road, and an honor guard in bright berets stood at attention. Antiaircraft guns pointed skyward, evidence that the army top brass still does not trust the air force, which has been behaving ambivalently.

As a crowd of 10,000 looked on, General Abdul Haris Nasution, Defense Minister and Commander of the Army, hobbled forward on crutches, supported by two aides. Nasution had been a prime target of the assassins and had broken an ankle in his escape. His five-year-old daughter Erma was shot and killed. "We living witnesses know that you were upholding truth and justice," said Nasution, addressing the dead. "In our heart you are the heroes. We believe that the truth will win."

Special Orders. The truth is hard to find, especially in Indonesia, where confusion is a way of life, and President Sukarno is the greatest obfuscator of. them all. Still unresolved last week was whether the six generals were martyrs slain by Communist-supported plotters or whether they had been killed by Lieut. Colonel Untung and his palace guards to prevent their launching a coup of their own.

Those who suspect a direct Communist role recall that about two weeks before the Sept. 30 coup, Djakarta's Reds began preparing a foundation of some sort. Editorials in Communist newspapers, which had long grumbled about the soaring cost of living but never pressed for remedies, suddenly called for "immediate action," and their campaign against "capitalist bureaucrats" was abruptly stepped up. A few days before the coup, Communist cadremen were issued special orders, and some were given arms. Top leaders were told not to sleep in their homes for a few nights. When the coup came, the official Communist paper came out flatly in support of the uprising.

Yet many an old Djakarta hand is convinced that the Reds were not the masterminds. For one thing, Untung's clumsy and ill-planned coup lacked the slick organization one would expect from efficient Communist Party Chief D. N. Aidit. With 3,500,000 members, plus his large and increasing influence on Sukarno's policies, Aidit was doing well enough as things were.

Strangely Defensive. One theory is that there actually was a plot by the generals to take over control and put an end to the growing power of the Communists. It gains color from the fact that Sukarno did not even appear at the funeral of the slain officers. Next day, as Sukarno called his Cabinet into emergency session at his summer palace in Bogor, Nasution did not show up--but two Communist ministers did, along with Air Force Chief General Omar Dani, a Communist sympathizer.

After 31 hours of closed-door talk, Foreign Minister Subandrio said that President Sukarno had prevailed on the cabinet to 1) regard the Untung affair as an "internal problem" of the army that would be settled by the army; 2) accept the statement by the Communist Party's Politburo that the Reds had nothing to do with the attempted coup; 3) support a return to unity and a revival of "Nasakom"--one of the portmanteau words Sukarno loves to invent. This one is composed of the first letters of the words for nationalism, religion and Communism and is supposed to symbolize the merging of all three currents to carry forward the "revolution."

Burning Crowd. It was not a line calculated to placate the army, which remained firmly in control of Djakarta.

All Communist newspapers were shut down, a dusk-to-dawn curfew was established, the army-run Radio Indonesia and the newspapers headlined charges that the Communists were deeply involved in Untung's coup. Communist leaders were jailed, and there was an intense search for arms.

A huge anti-Communist rally was held at Bung Karno Stadium, and thousands of students paraded in Djakarta's streets shouting "Kill Aidit!" and "Dissolve the Communist Party!" As approving soldiers looked on, the crowd set fire to Communist headquarters, completely destroying the one-story building. Since this was Indonesia, the students left untouched the nearly finished five-story Red headquarters in the next street. To add to the confusion, one group of students marched to the U.S. embassy to shout "Long live America!" while another group chanted the accusation that the CIA was backing the Indonesian Communist Party.

Sukarno is a sick man (kidney and gall-bladder trouble), and it seems likely that the sudden rash of plotting represented maneuvers for position by factions anticipating his departure from the scene. Seven Chinese doctors constantly attend him, and he stayed all week at Bogor. But he didn't look very ill as he paced his palace corridors. In fact, his familiar charm seemed still to have some of its old effect. The army reluctantly called a halt to its roundup of Communists and even anti-Red newspapers were responding to the call for unity. But if, after the murder of the generals, Sukarno can get the infuriated army once again to work in tandem with the Communists, he deserves top honors as a mediator--or magician.

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