
What time is it in Indonesia? Last week the public clocks which the punctual Dutch had placed along Batavia’s sweltering, mosquito-infested streets did not say; nobody had wound them. Nobody collected electric bills, because the electrical engineers are Dutch and the company accountants Indonesian; they could not decide who should get the receipts. Batavia had two mayors, one Dutch, one Indonesian; two flags, one Queen Wilhelmina’s and one Ir. Soekarno’s; two currencies, neither of which could buy much, and two possible destinies: it might become the chief city of the first great Moslem colony to free itself from European rule, or it might come to symbolize the first wave of Asiatic nationalism to break into chaos. Continue reading →
23 December, 2009
Categories: Internasional . Tags: Soekarno, Time . Author: vq . Comments: Leave a comment