Alhamdulillah, ceritera pendek saya dalam bahasa Sunda “Album 1966” yang dimuat dalam SK Tribun Jabar, 18-20 September 2012, telah diterjemahkan oleh Condrad William (Bill Watson) ke dalam bahasa Inggris. Bill juga akan menerjemahkan cerpen saya “Tanah Sakarung” yang dimuat dalam Tribun Jabar April 2014. Emoga hal ini menjadi dorongan untuk menggairahkan kreativitas menulis dalam bahasa Sunda. Terlampir terjemahan “Album 1966” The ’66 Album by Usep Romli HM Album ‘66 Tribun Jabar 18-20 September 2012 His mobile phone rang. Kasa was startled. He had been nodding off in the doctor’s waiting room. He was there as usual; every week he had to come to have a check up. He had heart problems. He found it difficult to cope with sudden shocks and noises . His wife had advised him to turn down the the volume of his mobile so that it did not ring so loudly. In fact it would have been best if he put it on silent and just left it on vibration mode. But he hadn’t listened to her. He groped around for his thick spectacles. Even still the letters on the screen of his mobile were rather blurred, but he made them out finally. It was from a number that he did not recognize. But the contents of the message were written in a friendly by-the-way manner. In fact you could say too by-the-way, a bit abrupt. ‘Is that the number of Kasan Kosala? If it is, do you rememeber your old mate? Soron Siregar.” Soron Siregar? Kasan frowned. He tried to recall. He went through all the nsmes of his Batak friends who could speak Sundanese one by one. No, nothing came. He replied quickly. In the same friendly manner. “Yup, I’m Kasan Kosala. And you, mate, Soron Siregar, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten who you are.. A repy soon followed. ‘You really are over the hill. And you’re not yet 70 are you? I seem to remember you are the same age as me; you’ve just turned 68…..December 1966, you and I went together to Tamblong Street to collect payment for our newspaper articles and then we went to that small restaurant in Kebon Kelapa…..” Kasan frowned again.Tamblong Street, 1966. That meant the era of the newspaper , “Mahasiswa Indonesia” which was at the peak of its fame then. That was when the student demonstrations were at their height, calling for the overthrow of the Old Order. Calling for the overthrow of Sukarno from his position as President. “Yes of course.” Kasan smacked his forehead. He remembered now. Old Soron was one of the gang (Kisaran?) A student who had only managed to complete his preliminary qualifying degree, his sarjana muda. He’d entered the university in 1962. And then there had been the strikes. And in 1966 classes stopped altogether. The universities were closed by the Minister of Education because they had become the basis of the Kesatuan Aksi Mahasiswa Indonesia, (KAMI), the United Action Front of the Students of Indonesia, who were leading the demonstrations. It was they who had given rise to the term, “Angkatan 66”, “The Generation of 66”. It was a movement against the Old Order. The students from Bandung were known to be more active and more outspoken than those from Jakarta or other towns. And this became even more apparent with the publication of “Mahasiswa Indonesia” which was a better paper than “Harian KAMI” that came out of Jakarta. Then came “Mimbar Demokrasi” which was also anti-Old Order. As soon as he remembered he didn’t bother sending another sms; he telephoned straightaway, going out of the waiting room to use his phone. He got through. They spoke for a long time, both asking about each other. How many children, how many grandchildren? What had each been up to in the forty five years since they had last met? It seemed that Soron had been a civil servant in the tax department in Jakarta. Only he hadn’t liked it there. He’d left and changed his job and tried to become a businessman. But there was too much competition from all the big conglomerate companies which had sprung up. Finally he had become a flower farmer on the slopes of Mount Semeru. “I grew apples also. Yes and they were good too and there was a flourishing market for them. But recently they haven’t been able to compete with apples imported from China…. I don’t know where our country is heading. We fought all those years ago to free our people and our country from the shackles of of the Old Order regime which tyrannised us. But now the government is even more repressive. But what about you..?” “Oh me I’ve just been a teacher. Up to my retirement. But let’s wait until we meet, we’ll continue then…” Kasan switched off his mobile since he had been called by the doctor. After he had returned to the house he undressed and put on casual house clothes. He took his medicine and then lay on his bed. His thought about this and that and his mind begn to wander. He thought of Soron ‘Samsosir’. He’d said that he had got his telephone number from a magazine in which one of Kasan’s short stories had been published. And Soron had been complimentary about the story, observing that although Kasan was getting on in years he was still productive. “When I was a student during that time of the demonstrations I could write too. But now that’s all stopped. Even finding time for reading is difficult,” he said. But in the past Soron had been very productive. Almost every week in “Mahasiswa Indonesia” there appeared an article of his sharply criticising the Old Order, not to mention other articles which appeared in Bandung. Kasan had on the other hand only written one or two such articles, though he had in addition written a lot of fiction, short stories or poetry. Sometimes he had done translations. Not political analysis or opinion like Sobron. A sound from his mobile indicated another sms. He opened it. It was again from Sobron. “I’ve just read on the internet of the Bupati (district head) in your home-district, by the name of Jampana. He wants the new swimming pool to be named after him. Is that true? But the money for that swimming pool came from the central and regional government budgets, not from his own pocket. If it’s true it seems, then, that we failed in our fight to wipe out the cult of the individual.” He didn’t reply immediately. Kasan wanted to give a full description of the situation to Sobron. At the same time he wanted to recall those memories of the times when the idealism of the student struggle of 66 was at its height. The slogans, “Defend our Rights, Destroy the Wrong,” were uttered by those who not only took positions but matched them with actions. It wasn’t just empty words. One wrong which had to be destroyed at that time was the cult of the individual. The worship of institutions and individuals. The Old Order and those who led it. At that time the centre of the cult was Bung Karno, the first president of the new Republic from the time of its declaration in 1945. However, after twenty one years in office, he had floated slogans such as “Guided Democracy”, “The Revolution is not yet Over”, and all sorts of crises had broken out in different arenas. There was a political crisis, an economic crisis, a cultural crisis. And there followed a moral crisis. One particular activist from KAMI, a student at ITB, MT Zen had written an article in the paper “Mingguan Indonesia” which had the title, “ Bringing Suffering to the People of Indonesia.” He criticised the speech of Bung Karno to the national assembly (MPRS) in July 1966 which had had as its title, “Bringing Literacy to the People.” According to MT Zen, that speech described exactly the opposite of what the Indonesian people were facing at that time. From the beginning of the 60s the New Order had behaved stupidly and had tried to take the people along with them in their stupidity. It was cruel. Harsh. Totalitarian. They had only wanted to establish a superifical prestige and standing, while not caring in the slightest for the needs of the people. The suffering was hidden behind the ideology of power. The price of rice and basic needs had risen astronomically. The import of all sorts of items had also risen, but that did not affect the majority of people. It was only a matter which exercised the elite. As for exports, they had collapsed, because nothing was working. Agricultural harvest were being destroyed by pests, industry was being destroyed by corruption and bad management. Bribery and graft were rife everywhere. Personal and collective connections dominated everything. The situation was made worse by political parties and the bureaucracy which arbitrarily used the people’s money for personal use of individuals and their cronies. The money from taxation was dishonestly manipulated. There was horizontal conflict between different sections in the society which could erupt at any time and in any place. The climax was reached in the rebellion of the “Movement of the 30 September 1965” which involved the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). II MT Zen’s article was distributed widely and became the subject of discussions everywhere. It fuelled the anti-Old Order sentiment, and the opposition to the cult of the individual. And indeed Soron Siregar and several other writers participated in the discussion and commented on MT Zen’s article. “All the chaos which has taken place over the last two years has derived from the cult of the individual. President Sukarno has been elevated to ridiculous heights. He has been loaded with all sorts of titles. Titles such as, “Penyambung Lidah Rakyat” (Mouthpiece of the People), “Pemimpin Besar Revolusi” (The Great Leader of the Revolution), which were deliberately popularised by Sukarno himself. And then other titles were added which of course Sukarno was not averse to. And when it came to the point that he was elevated to “Life President” by the MPRS assembly of 1964 the cult of Sukarno as an individual became even more pronounced. At that time there emerged “Komando Tertinggi Retoling Apperatur Revolusi (KOTRAR)” (The Highest Authority for the Retooling of the Revolutionary Structure) headed by the deputy Prime Minster (Waperdam) Subandrio who also held the position of head of the Central Intelligence. Its function, in addition to spreading the “Teachings of the Great Leader of the Revolutuon” were to carry out spying activities in case there were individuals or groups that dared to obstruct or misapply the teachings of the Great Leader. It was from that time that the places of detention of the police, the army, the public prosecutor and the prisons were full of people who were accused of being anti-revolutionary who had dared to criticise Sukarno. Those who reported them and arrested them were sycophants who only wanted to win praise from the regime in power.” That was the kind of thing that Soron wrote that raised the political temperature. And Kasan for his part had written several short stories and poems. They were published in literary magazines which appeared in Jakarta. They appeared alongside poems by Taufiq Ismail, Mansyur Samin, Abdul Wahid Situmeang, the contents of which all condemned the wrongs of the Old Order and looked forward to the establishment of the New Order. Those poems were read out aloud in front of the student demonstrators at the traffice circus by the Hotel Indonesia, in front of the presidential palace and elsewhere. They were read out in the broadcasts put out by KAMI on the radio. The Old Order which had been so strong, supported by political parties and by the military, especially by the special presidential guard, the “Cakrabiwara”, finally fell. On the 11 March, President Sukarno issued “Surat Parentah Sebelas Maret” (The Governing Decree of the 11 March) which later became known as “Supersemar”. It gave authority to General Suharto to maintain national law and order. In the month of February 1967, President Sukarno returned his mandate to the MPRS. And then the MPRS appointed General Suharto to the position of President of the Republic of Indonesia and this was confirmed in the special assembly of the MPRS of March 1968. The students yelled with joy. Their struggle had been successful. And one of of the leaders of the student movement in ITB, Aldy Anwar, wrote an article over five issues of “Mahasiswa Indonesia” in February to March 1967 with the title, “De-Sukarnoisation has Ended The Cult of the Individual.” But triumph turned to failure. The New Order which it was said would correct all the mistakes of the Old Order was no different. Especially in terms of the cult of the individual. Suharto was in power longer than Sukarno: thirty years from 1966-1998. The cult of the individual in relation to Suharto was even worse; it applied shamelessly to his family and to his cronies. Sayings such as, ‘as the chief has instructed’ and ‘it depends on the one above’ became indications of the new cult. If, before, Sukarno had set up KOTRAR so that his teachings could be the instrument for the making of the cult, so Suharto set up the BP7, P4 and Pancasila for the same purpose. Kasan tried to tap out a reply to Soron: “ Yes our fight ended in failure, Ron. You could see this after so many of our fellow fighters of those times went and entered the circles of power, both in the legislature and in the executive. They forgot about the hard times of the demonstrations in which we were all in it together. They forgot about the aspirations of the people for which we were fighting…” He sent it off quickly. The reply was soon in coming: “The Reformation post-1998 shoud have completely transformed that failure of ours. But look it’s now fourteen years later and it’s as though we had turned back to the past. To the cult of the individual again. Look at the uncritical acquiescent talk of those executive and legislative star performers if they start spouting on the television. There is not one of them who dares to criticise the individual figures or the parties in power. Just the opposite, they praise each other, conceal each other’s crimes.What else is this if it is not the cult of the individual?” Kasan sighed. Soron was right. It was especially noticeable if you saw everything in the context of events which seemed to have no end: the cases of corruption among the elite, the millions spent on the expenses of members of parliament who went on study tours to foreign countries, the President’s private plane, the cost of special tents erected for the President when he went to inspect the scene of a natural disaster which amounted to 15 billion rupiah.. that was cult of the individual gone mad. “And imitation of this behaviour goes right down to the provinces. The new regional autonomy has created petty princes who hold absolute power. They are free to order expenditure for whatever they feel like. The provincial parliamentary assemblies which should exercise control can be bought off to collude in these goings-on. They all conspire to deceive and and play their conjuring tricks. They are all in it, the subordinates and the boot-lickers; they all participate in the schemes. They misappropriate the social welfare funds, religious charitable foundations and other bodies. Or they propose their names for roads, for bridges, for stadiums, and all kinds of other constructions since this could possibly bring long-term advantages for them. No matter that these are projects which have been paid for by the people’s money, as you said just now with respect to the swimming pool to be named “Jampana”. The name was given because it was built when Jampana was Bupati and wanted to make his name known, and wanted to put himself forward for a second period of office as Bupati..” Kasan typed out this lengthy reply to Soron. III There was a breeze. The breeze of the dry season. Kasan felt it blowing through the cracks of the window frames. It had been a long dry season And water sources had dried up. In fact in some places a number of people had been forced to drink waste water. The rice-fields were parched and cracked.Crops had died. The leaves on the trees were withering. And all this time there was a profusion of banners and posters in the names of parliamentary candidates who were putting themselves forward for election. The writing on them was full of self-praise. Narcissistic. They said that they were honest, could be relied on, were clever and dedicated, and other things of that kind which all tended to the encouragement of their own cult of the individual. This had not even been known during the times of the cult of the individual in the Old Order or New Order periods. “History tends come round again, as the French say,” Kasan wrote once more. And he wrote it in French, ‘historié sé répété.’ He knew the phrase because he had once written an essay which looked at the cult of the individual as it was surreptiously being practised in a new way by the incumbents of the New Order. The essay was sharp but within bounds. If it had been frank and outspoken the writer would certainly have been arrested by the Security or the Intelligence Forces. He would have been locked up just like that. Just like WS Rendra and other leading critical figures. Like Muhtar Lubis. Like Adnan Buyung Nasution. Or his civil rights would have been suspended because he had shown opposition to the president and his views. Like General Nasution, Ali Sadikin, Mohammad Natsir and many others. Kasan’s mobile went off again. An sms from Soron: “And Bupati Jampana is a young man at that.When people were risking everything in the demonstrations he was not even of school age. He was just five years old. And now he’s got to the top. To the point where he is in a position to make a cult of himself. His reason is, he says, because a proposal was put forward by one or two community organisations that the swimming pool should be named after him. Can you believe it? You know better what the case really is.” Kasan smiled grimly. Although they had been together for several years on the campus and in the demonstration posts, Soron still didn’t realize that Kasan was not heavily involved in political matters. He listened to the debates but that was all. If it was a question of literature or culture then he did participate fully. But nonetheless he did think that he knew about political events that were occuring these days. Including the dispute over the name for the swimming pool between those who were for it and those against. But he had only read about it in passing. He hesitated before replying. In addition he was having difficuty with his breathing.. The gusts from the dry season wind were building up. They brought unpleasant smells. The smell of garbage piled up on every street corner. There were no rubbish collections. There was no one cleaning the streets. The workers and the people in charge of them seemed to be busying themselves with matters which were more important or more lucrative for them; for example, putting up as many banners as possible, even though they were becoming real eye-sores. “Yes, it’s exactly like that. When we were doing our bit during the student campaigns, Jampana was still in short trousers,” Kasan forced himself to reply to Soron’s sms. The reply from Soron again came quickly. “Yes we failed. Our efforts failed. Students were just ammunition, something used to protect others. And so idealism was used up, eaten away by the greed for power.” How could he agree with this, how could he disagree. Kasan took a deep breath. His feelings stirred as though he was opening an album of the student movement of 1966. Full of heroic pictures. Of the stream of blood of the students who were victims of the cruel bullets of the the authorities, Arief Rahman Hakim, Zaenal Zakse, who died during the “Tirta” demonstration in Lapangan Banteng in Jakarta. They had been demanding that the ministers in the Old Order cabinet be replaced, that prices be lowered, that the PKI be disbanded. In Bandung Julius Usman was shot and died on the 19 August 1966 in Jalan Lembong, when demonstrators rejected the national address of President Sukarno to the legislative assembly (DPR-GR) in the parliament building in Jakarta, the speech entitled “Jas Merah” which was an abbreviation of “Jangan Sekali-Sekali Melupakan Sejarah” (Don’t Ever Forget History). In that speech Sukarno had described the service of the PKI in the struggle for Indonesian Independence. He had mentioned the many members of the party who had been arrested by the Dutch and exiled to Boven Digul. This was the album of the student struggle which according to Soron had failed. Because what they had wanted to clean up then, namely the cult of the individual, narcissism, self-praise had now grown again in even more profusion. The open licence to do what one wanted had as its consequence a decline in public morals which had become increasingly extensive. This was not only occurring in elite circles and among the older generation but even at the lower rungs of society and among youngsters who were still wet behind the ears One’s nose was affected by the garbage carrying the smell of rotting carcases of dead animals. It seemed as if it was evoking the offensive stench of the cult of the individual which was beginning to pollute once more the contemporary social system. The album of 66 which Kasan was imagining became suddenly clearer. Brighter was the flow of the tears and blood raging purple with pain, because nothing had any effect. The old period had gone, replaced by a time of chaos, by a period in which everything was rushing headlong into a bottomless ravine. Canterbury, 7 July 2014
Posted on: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 09:02:05 +0000
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