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Sukarno was one of the great charismatic leaders of the post-war world. To some he was the architect of his nation, to others a flamboyant and extravagant dictator.
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Mohammad Hatta, the first Vice President and joint proclaimer of the Republic of Indonesia, was a man who devoted almost his entire life to an ideal. From his early years until his death in 1980, the issue of Indonesian freedom overshadowed all other aspects of his life. Hatta's biography depicts the dogged determination, courage, and optimism, required by an Indonesian leader if he were to confront a colonial power and win his country's independence. His life history also portrays the disillusionment and frustration a leader experiences when his life-long democratic ideal is shattered and the new nation reverts to a type of government similar to the one he had dedicated his life to transforming. Indonesian freedom meant more to Hatta than the attainment of national sovereignty; it also demanded an element of social reform. Freedom for Indonesia must also ensure the people's participation in their country's government. Independence must not bring to birth a nation in which the majority of the people would be powerless, as in the colonial period. Hatta's concept of democratic government and social and economic betterment for the people he named kedaulatan rakyat, people's sovereignty. Writing Hatta's biography has been for me an immensely satisfying experience. Since reading his anthology Portrait of a Patriot as a first-year undergraduate, my curiosity to discover more about Hatta has compelled me to research the life of this complex leader who walked in Sukarno's shadow but yet was a "powerhouse" in his own right. I have been aware that it was impossible to discover the whole truth about Hatta, for only a fraction of his life could be uncovered and recorded. There are also formidable barriers dividing me from Hatta, as I am neither an Indonesian nor a Muslim. I have tried to break down some of these obstacles by interaction with Indonesian people, by extensive reading of Indonesian texts, and by a study of Islam. Fortunately Hatta and I have perspectives in common which acted as bridges. I regret very much that I never had the privilege of meeting him, as he died just at the time I commenced my research. - Mavis Rose
Sukarno – a biography is the first English language biography on Sukarno (1901-1970) – the founding father and first president of Indonesia. The book is both a biography of Sukarno and an account of the birth and ascent of the state of Indonesia. The author reveals many little-known facts and events. He makes the reader realize that to understand the character of its first president is to understand today’s Indonesia.. Sukarno was born in 1901 as the son of a schoolteacher in a country that had been a Dutch colony for almost three centuries. For most of his life, he was a subject of The Netherlands, at least formally. Although he never set foot in The Netherlands, towards the end of his life, he could still recite the names of all the Frisian waterways, or all the train stations between major Dutch towns. Sukarno once confessed that he dreamt, prayed, and swore in Dutch. But he loathed the colonizer. As soon as he became the president, he banned the speaking of Dutch. His charisma, oratorical talent, intelligence, and ruthlessness eventually allowed this former architecture student to become the leader of the nationalist movement known as Indonesia Merdeka! (which means Indonesia Independent). Although it took another four bloody years until the Dutch would accept Indonesia’s independence, for Indonesians today, Merdeka became a reality after August 17 1945. But the departure of the Dutch in the 1950s didn’t mean that president Sukarno was suddenly without enemies. At least four attempts were made on his life between 1957 and 1962. The Indonesian president was convinced that the CIA saw him as a communist threat, and was behind at least one of the assassination attempts. Today’s Indonesia still bears the mark of its first president. Sukarno developed the five pillars of Pancasila (the official philosophical foundation of the Indonesian state): belief in God, nationalism, international humanism, consensus democracy, and social justice. For example, the fifth pillar, social justice, still requires the Indonesian government to allocate a substantial part of the national income to social security provisions such as unemployment, health and disability insurance, as well as pensions. Sukarno’s main constitutional heritage is the fact that Indonesia has become a unitary state. Indonesia is an archipelago that is as wide as the distance between Ireland and the Caucasus; it is the fourth most populous nation in the world. Countries of similar size and diversity all have adopted federal forms of governance. But in Indonesia, federation is still a loaded concept, one that many see as a betrayal of the fight against the colonial power. This attests to how certainly Sukarno will remain a vital part of his nation’s history. About the author Dr. Lambert J. Giebels (1935-2011) was a Dutch politician and writer who was renowned in the Netherlands for his political biographies. His two-volume biography of Sukarno, written in Dutch, originally consisted of 1,100 pages. The English translation, Sukarno – A biography, is an abridged version of those two volumes. The translation is a collaboration between the Indonesian-American Raden M. Gatot Kusuma Sujanto and Geert van der Linden, a former vice-president of the Asian Development Bank in Manila.
From a riverside shack to the presidential palace, Joko Widodo surged to the top of Indonesian politics on a wave of hope for change. However, six years into his presidency, the former furniture maker is struggling to deliver the reforms that Indonesia desperately needs. Despite promising to build Indonesia into an Asian powerhouse, Jokowi, as he is known, has faltered in the face of crises, from COVID-19 to an Islamist mass movement. Man of Contradictions, the first English-language biography of Jokowi, argues that the president embodies the fundamental contradictions of modern Indonesia. He is caught between democracy and authoritarianism, openness and protectionism, Islam and pluralism. Jokowi’s incredible story shows what is possible in Indonesia – and it also shows the limits.
When a reluctant President Sukarno gave Lt Gen Soeharto full executive authority in March 1966, Indonesia was a deeply divided nation, fractured along ideological, class, religious and ethnic lines. Soeharto took a country in chaos, the largest in Southeast Asia, and transformed it into one of the “Asian miracle” economies—only to leave it back on the brink of ruin when he was forced from office thirty-two years later. Drawing on his astonishing range of interviews with leading Indonesian generals, former Imperial Japanese Army officers and men who served in the Dutch colonial army, as well as years of patient research in Dutch, Japanese, British, Indonesian and US archives, David Jenkins brings vividly to life the story of how a socially reticent but exceptionally determined young man from rural Java began his rise to power—an ascent which would be capped by thirty years (1968–98) as President of Indonesia, the fourth most populous nation on earth. Soeharto was one of Asia’s most brutal, most durable, most avaricious and most successful dictators. In the course of examining those aspects of his character, this book provides an accessible, highly readable introduction to the complex, but dramatic and utterly absorbing, social, political, religious, economic and military factors that have shaped, and which continue to shape, Indonesia.
In the early morning hours of October 1, 1965, a group calling itself the September 30th Movement kidnapped and executed six generals of the Indonesian army, including its highest commander. The group claimed that it was attempting to preempt a coup, but it was quickly defeated as the senior surviving general, Haji Mohammad Suharto, drove the movement’s partisans out of Jakarta. Riding the crest of mass violence, Suharto blamed the Communist Party of Indonesia for masterminding the movement and used the emergency as a pretext for gradually eroding President Sukarno’s powers and installing himself as a ruler. Imprisoning and killing hundreds of thousands of alleged communists over the next year, Suharto remade the events of October 1, 1965 into the central event of modern Indonesian history and the cornerstone of his thirty-two-year dictatorship. Despite its importance as a trigger for one of the twentieth century’s worst cases of mass violence, the September 30th Movement has remained shrouded in uncertainty. Who actually masterminded it? What did they hope to achieve? Why did they fail so miserably? And what was the movement’s connection to international Cold War politics? In Pretext for Mass Murder, John Roosa draws on a wealth of new primary source material to suggest a solution to the mystery behind the movement and the enabling myth of Suharto’s repressive regime. His book is a remarkable feat of historical investigation. Finalist, Social Sciences Book Award, the International Convention of Asian Scholars