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Missing Gardner. All this was too much for Bung Karno. By now he had taken a fourth wife—a young, lissome divorcee named Hartini—without bothering to divorce Fatmawati, the mother of his five children. Sukarno took off for a tour of the world's capitals, shopping for new ideas. The tour became a triumphal procession and a tonic for the dispirited President of a mismanaged nation. He arrived in the U.S. quoting Abraham Lincoln, got a ticker-tape welcome in New York City, saw Hollywood (he was disappointed to miss Ava Gardner, who was off in Spain), made an address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress. He told the Congressmen that "we of Indonesia are in the stage of national turmoil through which America passed some 150 years ago. We ask you to understand," and won hearty applause by dwelling on the many similarities between the American Revolution and that of Indonesia against the Dutch. He charmed the U.S. President and press. But Sukarno was not overly impressed with the U.S. Americans are too tense, he said when he got home ; they work too hard, they obviously lack halus, or spirituality. They have a good production system, but they don't know how to distribute what they make.
Scarcely three months later, Sukarno was in the Soviet Union and delighting his new hosts by implying a close identity the Soviet struggle against capital ism and Indonesia's against colonialism. The Russians spared no effort, furnished his Aeroflot plane with a pretty, blonde stewardess and interpreter named Valentina Reshetnyak. Sukarno imperially arranged for the interpreter to visit him in Djakarta, where she still remains.
But the peak of stage management was achieved by Red China. Hundreds of thousands lined the roads as Sukarno passed; schoolchildren paraded, youth groups cried "Hidup Bung Karno!" Flow ers and confetti and drums and songs greeted his every appearance. Chou En-lai personally showed him factories and bridges. After Russia, Sukarno had observed dubiously: "One can see the price of their achievement in the faces of their people." But here were Communists who smiled.
Three-Legged Horse. Sukarno came back to Djakarta full of wonder. "I've seen the answer in China," he told inti mates. "Now we must do something. Ev ery country in the world seems to make progress but Indonesia." His new political idea: "guided democracy." It was based, he said, on the ancient village idea of gotong-royong, mutual help, a sort of village meeting where all the elders discuss and discuss a proposition until they are in unanimous agreement. There was no vote, because votes produce majorities and minorities, and such division of the people leads to unhappiness and opposition. Under Sukarno's new conception, the elected Parliament would be in tandem with a National Council, selected by the President, and containing representatives of the various groups in the nation: youth, business, labor, women, the arts and professions.