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The Supersemar, the Indonesian abbreviation for Surat Perintah Sebelas Maret (Order of March the Eleventh) was a document ostensibly signed by the Indonesian President Sukarno on March 11, 1966, giving the Army commander Lt. Gen. Suharto authority to take whatever measures he "deemed necessary" to restore order in the chaotic situation following the events of the previous September. Background On September 30, 1965, a group calling itself the 30 September Movement killed six senior Army generals, seized control of the center of Jakarta and issued a number of decrees over Republic of Indonesian Radio. Suharto and his allies defeated the movement, but Sukarno was fatally weakened. The Army accused its long standing rival, the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) of being behind the "coup attempt" (see Indonesian Civil War). Over the next few months, Suharto and the army seized the initiative, and during a cabinet meeting (which Suharto did not attend), troops without insignia surrounded the presidential palace where the meeting was being held. Sukarno was advised to leave the meeting, and did so, flying to the presidential palace in Bogor, 60km south of Jakarta, by helicopter. Later that afternoon, three Army generals, Maj. Gen. Basuki Rahmat (1921-1969), Minister for Veteran Affairs, Brig. Gen. M. Jusuf (1928-2004), Minister for Basic Industry and Brig. Gen. Amirachmud (1923-1995), Commander of the V/Jaya Jakarta Military Area Command, visited Sukarno and came away with the signed Supersemar, which they then presented to Suharto. The next day, Suharto used the powers thus conferred on him to ban the PKI, and on March 18, fifteen Sukarno loyalist ministers were arrested. Suharto changed the composition of the Provisional People's Consultative Assembly (MPRS), and in March 1967 it voted to strip Sukarno of his powers and appointed Suharto acting president. In 1968, the MPRS removed the word 'acting', and Suharto remained in power until toppled by the Indonesian Revolution of 1998 (Riklef 1982). The Document The Supersemar itself is a simple document of less than 200 words. It reads as follows: PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA ORDER I. Considering 1.1 The current state of the Revolution, together with the national and international political situation 1.2 The Order of the Day of the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces/President/Supreme Commander of the Revolution dated 8 March 1966 II. Taking into account 2.1 The need for calm and stability of the Government and the progress of the Revolution 2.2 The need for a guarantee of integrity of the Great Leader of the Revolution, the Armed Forces and the People to preserve the leadership and obligations of the President/Supreme Commander/Supreme Commander of the Revolution and his teachings III. Decides/Orders LIEUTENANT GENERAL SOEHARTO, MINISTER/ARMY COMMANDER To: In the name of the President/Supreme Commander/Great Leader of the Revolution 1. Take all measures deemed necessary to guarantee security and calm as well as the stability of the progress of the Revolution, as well as to guarantee the personal safety and authority of the leadership of the President/Supreme Commander/Great Leader of the Revolution/holder of the Mandate of the Provisional People's Consultative Assembly for the sake of the integrity of the Nation and State of the Republic of Indonesia, and to resolutely implement all the teachings of the Great leader of the Revolution. 2. Coordinate the execution of orders with the commanders of the other forces to the best of his ability. 3. Report all actions related to duties and responsibilities as stated above. IV. Ends Djakarta, 11 March 1966 PRESIDENT/SUPREME COMMANDER/GREAT LEADER OF THE REVOLUTION/HOLDER OF THE MANDATE OF THE PROVISIONAL PEOPLE'S CONSULTATIVE ASSEMBLY signed SUKARNO (Sekretariat Negara (1985), translated by the author) The Circumstances Surrounding the Signing of the Supersemar Indonesians usually end documents with the place the document was signed and the date. Given that the Supersemar was supposedly signed in Bogor, it is odd that the Supersemar is signed "Djakarta". In his account of the events of March 1966, Hanafi (1999), close friend of Sukarno and ambassador to Cuba says that he went to Bogor on March 12 and met with Sukarno. He says that Sukarno told him Suharto had sent three generals with a document they had already prepared for him to sign. He says that Sukarno felt he had to sign it because he was in a tight spot, but that the generals had promised to defend Sukarno and that the order would not be misused. However, Martoidjojo (1999), the commander of the presidential bodyguard, who went with Sukarno in the helicopter to Bogor, says that the Supersemar was typed in Bogor by Sukarno's adjutant and military secretary, Brig. Gen. Mochammed Sabur (? -1972). Djamaluddin (1998) corroborates this. The wording of the Supersemar itself could be read as a threat, namely the section reading "to guarantee the personal safety and authority of the leadership of Sukarno. However, in 1998, accusations appeared (reported in Center of Information Analysis (1999) of an even more direct threat, namely that two members of the presidential guard had seen Gen. M. Jusuf and Gen M. Panggabean (1922-2000), second assistant to the Army minister, pointed their pistols at Sukarno. M. Jusuf and others have denied this, and that Panggabean was even present. They called into doubt the credibility of key parts of the accusations, and said it was impossible for the two men to be so close to the president at the time. The Disappearance of the Original One of the most obvious oddities regarding the Supersemar is that the original document can no longer be traced. Although Indonesia was in a fairly chaotic state at the time, it is surprising that more care was not taken to preserve a document that school history books cite as the legitimization of Suharto's ensuing actions. After all, the original document of the Indonesian Declaration of Independence is still preserved. The Existence of Multiple Versions One of the publications to appear since the fall of Suharto alleges that there were several versions of the Supersemar (Center for Information Analysis 1999). Even before the fall of Suharto, an official publication commemorating 30 years of Indonesian independence reproduced one version of Supersemar, while an officially sanctioned high school history textbook featured a different version (Sekretariat Negara March 1985, Chaniago et al 1997). In 2005, there was an exhibition at Jakarta's Satriamandala Military Museum (home of the Indonesian Military History Center). Among the exhibits were fairly poor quality photocopies of no less than four versions of the Supersemar. The text is substantially the same, but there are differences in layout, letter heading and, most importantly, of Sukarno's signature. The differences in the texts are as follows: The differences in the signatures are less clear, given the poor quality of some of the photocopies, but there are a number of features that are inconsistent. For example one signature, in the version used in the official account ( Sekretariat Negara March 1985) lacks the characteristic dot-and-horizontal-line after the word "Soekarno". There are also minor differences in the proximity and shapes of the letters, although some of these may be artifacts of the camera angle and the poor quality of the photocopying. Interestingly, in all the versions, the president's signature appears to read "Soekarno", whereas the typed name underneath is spelled "Sukarno". The Order of March 13 According to Hanafi (1999), in his discussions with Sukarno at the Bogor Palace on March 12, Sukarno was angry that the Supersemar had been used to ban the PKI, as it was the prerogative of the president to ban political parties. He said he had asked Third Deputy Prime Minister Leimena (1905-1977) to take a written order to Suharto, and that he would wait to see what Suharto's reaction was – whether he would obey it or not. He asked Hanafi to help Third Deputy Prime Minister Chaerul Saleh (1916-1967) and First Deputy Prime Minister Subandrio (1914-2004). The two men showed Hanafi the "Order of March 13", which stated that the Order of March 11 was technical and administrative in nature, not political, warned General Suharto that he was not to take any actions outside the scope of the order and asking Suharto to report to the president at the palace. Saleh planned to make copies of the order and distribute them to loyal members of the palace guard and to Sukarno's young followers. Hanafi says 5,000 copies were made, and that he took a few back to Jakarta with him, but he does not know what happened to the others. In their official biography of Suharto, Dwipayana and Sjamsuddin (1991) also say that Sukarno questioned Suharto's use of the Supersemar and sent Leimena to ask Suharto to take responsibility for his actions. Saelan (2001) says Suharto ignored the order, and Hanafi says that Suharto sent a message back via Leimena, who returned to Bogor later that evening, saying he would take responsibility for his actions, and that he was unable to come to Bogor as he was due to attend a meeting of all the military commanders at 11am the following day, to which he invited Sukarno. Incidentally, Hanafi is ambiguous as to the dates in his account, as he says he was in Bogor on March 12, but the "correction" to the Supersemar was known as the Order of March 13. Note on Spelling In 1970, Indonesian and Malaysia agreed on a common spelling system for their languages., the EYD (Perfected Spelling) As a result, there are two or more versions of many of the names mentioned above. For example, "Jusuf" is spelled "Joesoef" in Bachtiar (1988). The modern spelling would be "Yusuf". The convention is wherever possible to use the spelling the person him/herself used, but this is not always possible to determine. I have tried to use the original spellings in this article while striving for consistency. Incidentally, the old spelling of "Jakarta" as "Djakarta" was used in all the versions of the Supersemar. | |||||||
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