The forgotten "father" of the Republic

He travels well and often uses secret and different identities, depending on which country he is on. At each country, his secret mission is often compromised and he has to use all at his disposal to escape from his nemesis. In every mission, there are often attractive female "friends" who is sympathetic with him. There are times when he was caught and thrown into prisons but he always escaped.

This is not a fictional biography of James Bond but rather the non-fictional history of Tan Malaka. In the folklore of the new order, Tan Malaka is he-whose name-should-not-be- mentioned. He occupies this place along with other politicians , who, deemed dangerous by both the 'old' and the 'new' orders, who found that there was a systematic cleansing of collective memory. This purge was achieved through a combination of a ban on their publications, their relatives shun by their neighbours and employment opportunities (especially the civil service) for relatives suddenly closed shut before their eyes.

But, thankfully, through the works of both established media (the respected newsweekly "Tempo" recently ran a special edition of Tan Malaka, titling the edition "the forgotten father of the Republic") and the alternative press (it's difficult to name them all) , the young-ish generation starts to hear an alternative version of the story of Tan Malaka.

At the risk of a spoiler effect, your correspondent decides not to divulge the details of the special edition. Needless to say it does seem a pity that Tempo appears to focus solely on Tan Malaka's side of the story and less on the 'establishment' side of the story. Understandbly there are reasons behind this, not least is probably that Tempo could have felt that sufficient time has been allocated to give the "official" version.

Your correspondent obviously is not a historian but in the process of reading the special edition, he obtains the impression that maybe Ibrahim (which is Tan Malaka' s real name; Datuk Tan Malaka is a title passed to him by his Clan) is a normal politician after all.

More to follow ...