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After 31 hours of closed-door talk, Foreign Minister Subandrio said that President Sukarno had prevailed on the cabinet to 1) regard the Untung affair as an "internal problem" of the army that would be settled by the army; 2) accept the statement by the Communist Party's Politburo that the Reds had nothing to do with the attempted coup; 3) support a return to unity and a revival of "Nasakom"—one of the portmanteau words Sukarno loves to invent. This one is composed of the first letters of the words for nationalism, religion and Communism and is supposed to symbolize the merging of all three currents to carry forward the "revolution."
Burning Crowd. It was not a line calculated to placate the army, which remained firmly in control of Djakarta.
All Communist newspapers were shut down, a dusk-to-dawn curfew was established, the army-run Radio Indonesia and the newspapers headlined charges that the Communists were deeply involved in Untung's coup. Communist leaders were jailed, and there was an intense search for arms.
A huge anti-Communist rally was held at Bung Karno Stadium, and thousands of students paraded in Djakarta's streets shouting "Kill Aidit!" and "Dissolve the Communist Party!" As approving soldiers looked on, the crowd set fire to Communist headquarters, completely destroying the one-story building. Since this was Indonesia, the students left untouched the nearly finished five-story Red headquarters in the next street. To add to the confusion, one group of students marched to the U.S. embassy to shout "Long live America!" while another group chanted the accusation that the CIA was backing the Indonesian Communist Party.
Sukarno is a sick man (kidney and gall-bladder trouble), and it seems likely that the sudden rash of plotting represented maneuvers for position by factions anticipating his departure from the scene. Seven Chinese doctors constantly attend him, and he stayed all week at Bogor. But he didn't look very ill as he paced his palace corridors. In fact, his familiar charm seemed still to have some of its old effect. The army reluctantly called a halt to its roundup of Communists and even anti-Red newspapers were responding to the call for unity. But if, after the murder of the generals, Sukarno can get the infuriated army once again to work in tandem with the Communists, he deserves top honors as a mediator—or magician.