I still can remember this person while we met some days ago. It was a cold night yet his excitement cast the breeze away. He told me about Soekarno, the first Indonesian president and the history during his study to proclaim Indonesian independence.
Dr. William H. Ansel to give him his fully name, a fellow academics with interest to Soekarno’s life. I felt like I was a bloody stupid Indonesian without having the knowledge about Soekarno as his. His short essay cited Soekarno’s ‘cleverness, ingenuity, organizational skills and powers of persuasion’ to bring Indonesia to its independence.
His point of view shows Soekarno as a person who united Indonesia considering its multicultural ethnic. ‘A single minded person … in the pursuit of Indonesian unity and independence’ probably the most intriguing fact that Soekarno has been jailed for couple of times yet still manage to embrace the people and prove himself as the prominent leader.
Dr William encourages me to read more about Soekarno as he consider that nobody should ever forget his political history as a great leader and the most important thing is that Soekarno was probably the only person who can see beyond his time to unite Indonesian as one.
One thing that surprised me that Dr. William was a staff officer at HQ SE Asia Command in 1946 where all the Dutch operational reports were sent to.
I haven’t seen any man with such great admiration to Soekarno, not even any person I know from Indonesia. The essay was handed over to me just after a quick chat when we met in our apartment stairs while he kept saying, “Nobody should ever forget about Soekarno!.”