INDONESIA: That Woman of Solo

And if ye are apprehensive that ye shall not deal fairly with orphans, then, of other women, who seem good in your eyes, marry but two, or three, or four, and if ye still fear that ye shall not act equitably, then one only. —Mohammed, in the Koran

The men of Indonesia might worry about the final count in the new recent nip-and-tuck election: the women were far more exercised about “that woman of Solo.”

“That woman” is Heriati Hartini Suwondo, the lissome divorcee that President Soekarno secretly married over a year ago. The women had not minded when Soekarno divorced his first wife for cause—childlessness—and took a new wife, Fatmawati, in 1942. Fatmawati bore him two boys and two girls, and took her place as the nation’s First Lady. But Hartini was something else again.

Soekarno met Hartini in 1953 during a ceremonial visit to Solo, in Central Java. Long before, according to the outraged ladies, Hartini had been only intermittently attentive to her husband and five children. In the months that followed, Hartini was rarely at home, and Indonesian society clattered with talk of the President’s clandestine romance. A year ago, a leading women’s organization circulated a letter to women’s clubs charging that Soekarno had married his girl. Only then did Soekarno admit that he had taken Hartini as a second wife in June 1954, and claimed that she had been divorced long before he met her. The women, suspecting Hartini’s reputation, promptly dug out the fact that Hartini’s divorce was not entered officially until April 1954. Moslem law requires the elapse of three menstrual periods before a divorced woman can remarry. Thus, the ladies calculated, Hartini had violated Moslem law. Soon she was delivered of a son.

Even then the women might have subsided if Hartini had been content to accept the modest status of second wife. But she briskly moved her whole Solo household and her five children into Bogor Palace, began to entertain old friends, receive officials and carry on for all the world like Indonesia’s First Lady, while Fatmawati shrank into the background. Whenever Soekarno traveled, Hartini traveled with him.

In protest, the women organized deliberate snubs. During the recent election campaign, the women sent delegations to greet Soekarno. But when Hartini stepped down from the plane, the delegation would turn and march off. They waited on officials, demanding that they snub her. To one irate delegation, Premier Harahap explained that on one occasion he had intended only to shake hands with the President. But Hartini determinedly went up to him with outstretched hand. “What could I do but accept her hand!” bleated Harahap.

Last week, buckling before the demands of women’s organizations, Premier Harahap authorized a special commission to establish a protocol “governing the married life or lives” of the President and other top officials. The unrelenting women were busy scouring Java for copies of a book which Soekarno had written in his more dispassionate days, vigorously advocating equal rights for women in the new Indonesia. They hoped to fill a truck full and dump the volumes on the President’s lawn. Cried one militant lady: “Before we are finished, Mme. Hartini will know her rightful place, and we will have struck a blow for all future generations of Indonesian women.”