Unyielding Son

In one of Indonesia's many crises three years ago, a young army officer named Zulkifli Lubis helped President Soekarno out of a tight spot. He was one of the officers who stood by the President when a rampaging mob, urged on by one faction of the army, sacked the House of Representatives and stormed the presidential palace.

The infant republic of Indonesia was in trouble again last week, and once again Colonel Lubis, now 33 and the army's deputy chief of staff, was in the thick of it, but not on Soekarno's side. The officers who lead Indonesia's quarter-million-man army were in revolt against Defense Minister Iwa Kusumasumantri, an admitted Marxist. They refused to accept a chief of staff he approved. Backed by the army brass, Colonel Lubis stood firm against both Kusumasumantri and Premier Ali Sastroamidjojo's government, which President Soekarno has repeatedly shored up with his own personal prestige.

With the army's ranks unbroken, Marxist Kusumasumantri finally had to quit his defense post, and last week he joined Soekarno on a flying pilgrimage to Mecca. Five days later, Ali Sastroamidjojo's government fell. It had held power for two years, longer than any other of Indonesia's twelve governments in the country's ten years of independence. Involved in the fall was Soekarno's own prestige, though he remains his country's most popular figure.

Soekarno, for his part, acknowledged the army's growing power, but he also remembered the colonel's past loyalty. Said the President: "Lubis has spit in my face and dragged me through mud, but he's still my son." When Soekarno returns from Mecca to appoint a new government, he may find that son Lubis and his army friends have a few suggestions to make.

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