Dua Presiden Indonesia yang Terlupakan Dalam Sejarah

Mungkin masih banyak dari masyrakat Indonesia yang beranggapan bahwa Indonesia hingga saat ini baru dipimpin oleh enam presiden, yaitu Soekarno, Soeharto, B.J. Habibie, K.H. Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur), Megawati Soekarnoputri dan kini Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY). Namun hal itu ternyata keliru. Indonesia, menurut catatan sejarah, hingga saat ini sebenarnya sudah dipimpin oleh delapan presiden. Lho, kok bisa? Lalu siapa dua orang lagi yang pernah memimpin Indonesia?

Dua tokoh yang terlewat itu adalah Sjafruddin Prawiranegara (sebelah kiri pada gambar di atas) dan Mr. Assaat. Keduanya tidak disebut, bisa karena alpa, tetapi mungkin juga disengaja. Sjafruddin Prawiranegara adalah Pemimpin Pemerintahan Darurat Republik Indonesia (PDRI) ketika Presiden Soekarno dan Moh. Hatta ditangkap Belanda pada awal agresi militer kedua, sedangkan Mr. Assaat adalah Presiden RI saat republik ini menjadi bagian dari Republik Indonesia Serikat (1949).

Pada tanggal 19 Desember 1948, saat Belanda melakukan agresi militer II dengan menyerang dan menguasai ibu kota RI saat itu di Yogyakarta, mereka berhasil menangkap dan menahan Presiden Soekarno, Moh. Hatta, serta para pemimpin Indonesia lainnya untuk kemudian diasingkan ke Pulau Bangka. Kabar penangkapan terhadap Soekarno dan para pemimpin Indonesia itu terdengar oleh Sjafrudin Prawiranegara yang saat itu menjabat sebagai Menteri Kemakmuran dan sedang berada di Bukittinggi, Sumatra Barat.

Mr. Sjafruddin Prawiranegara
Untuk mengisi kekosongan kekuasaan, Sjafrudin mengusulkan dibentuknya pemerintahan darurat untuk meneruskan pemerintah RI. Padahal, saat itu Soekarno – Hatta mengirimkan telegram berbunyi, “Kami, Presiden Republik Indonesia memberitakan bahwa pada hari Minggu tanggal 19 Desember 1948 djam 6 pagi Belanda telah mulai serangannja atas Ibu Kota Jogjakarta. Djika dalam keadaan pemerintah tidak dapat mendjalankan kewajibannja lagi, kami menguasakan kepada Mr. Sjafruddin Prawiranegara, Menteri Kemakmuran RI untuk membentuk Pemerintahan Darurat di Sumatra”.

Namun saat itu telegram tersebut tidak sampai ke Bukittinggi. Meski demikian, ternyata pada saat bersamaan Sjafruddin Prawiranegara telah mengambil inisiatif yang senada. Dalam rapat di sebuah rumah dekat Ngarai Sianok Bukittinggi, 19 Desember 1948, ia mengusulkan pembentukan suatu pemerintah darurat (emergency government). Gubernur Sumatra Mr. T.M. Hasan menyetujui usul itu “demi menyelamatkan Negara Republik Indonesia yang berada dalam bahaya, artinya kekosongan kepala pemerintahan, yang menjadi syarat internasional untuk diakui sebagai negara”.

Pada 22 Desember 1948, di Halaban, sekitar 15 km dari Payakumbuh, PDRI “diproklamasikan” . Sjafruddin duduk sebagai ketua/presiden merangkap Menteri Pertahanan, Penerangan, dan Luar Negeri, ad. interim. Kabinatenya dibantu Mr. T.M. Hasan, Mr. S.M. Rasjid, Mr. Lukman Hakim, Ir. Mananti Sitompul, Ir. Indracahya, dan Marjono Danubroto. Adapun Jenderal Sudirman tetap sebagai Panglima Besar Angkatan Perang.

Sjafruddin menyerahkan kembali mandatnya kepada Presiden Soekarno pada tanggal 13 Juli 1949 di Yogyakarta. Dengan demikian, berakhirlah riwayat PDRI yang selama kurang lebih delapan bulan melanjutkan eksistensi Republik Indonesia.

Mr. Assaat
Dalam perjanjian Konferensi Meja Bundar (KMB) yang ditandatangani di Belanda, 27 Desember 1949 diputuskan bahwa Belanda menyerahkan kedaulatan kepada Republik Indonesia Serikat (RIS). RIS terdiri dari 16 negara bagian, salah satunya adalah Republik Indonesia. Negara bagian lainnya seperti Negara Pasundan, Negara Indonesia Timur, dan lain-lain. Karena Soekarno dan Moh. Hatta telah ditetapkan menjadi Presiden dan Perdana Menteri RIS, maka berarti terjadi kekosongan pimpinan pada Republik Indonesia.

Assaat adalah Pemangku Sementara Jabatan Presiden RI. Peran Assaat sangat penting. Kalau tidak ada RI saat itu, berarti ada kekosongan dalam sejarah Indonesia bahwa RI pernah menghilang dan kemudian muncul lagi. Namun, dengan mengakui keberadaan RI dalam RIS yang hanya beberapa bulan, tampak bahwa sejarah Republik Indonesia sejak tahun 1945 tidak pernah terputus sampai kini. Kita ketahui bahwa kemudian RIS melebur menjadi Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia tanggal 15 Agustus 1950. Itu berarti, Assaat pernah memangku jabatan Presiden RI sekitar sembilan bulan.

Dengan demikian, SBY adalah presiden RI yang ke-8. Urutan Presiden RI adalah sebagai berikut: Soekarno (diselingi oleh Sjafruddin Prawiranegara dan Assaat), Soeharto, B.J. Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid, Megawati Soekarnoputri, dan Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

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10 of Literature’s Trippiest Books

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Caroll

In Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece of nonsense literature, Alice falls through the rabbit hole into an alternate universe where she shrinks and grows (after eating mushrooms and suspect baked goods, no less), where caterpillars smoke hookah, time stands still, and creatures bounce by speaking in riddles. Hallucinatory and wildly colorful, and supposedly all a daydream, it is by far one of the trippiest books of all time.

House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski

Sometimes described as a “satire of academic criticism,” Danielewski’s unconventional, claustrophobic novel forces the reader to work hard to unravel the plot, dealing with multiple narrators, strange text in unusual places, bizarre typography, and copious footnotes. The act of deciphering the novel is itself a disorienting experience, the text an ominous labyrinth that threatens to trap you inside forever.

The Orange Eats Creeps, Grace Krilanovich

This rather terrifying book, about a gang of “slutty teenage hobo vampire junkies” on the hunt for blood and cough syrup in the Pacific Northwest of the ’90s, reads like a drug-induced stream-of-consciousness nightmare, the reader just barely clinging along for the ride. The prose is spastic to the core, a fever dream of thick, dirty slang and sweaty desperation. It’s enough to keep you off the cough syrup for life.

Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs

Shifting wildly in time and space at what seems like every opportunity, the drug-filled chapters in Burroughs’ novel are meant to be read in any order. Burroughs’ famous “cut-up” technique was meant to mirror the spastic, jangly workings of a junkie’s mind, and in this book, the mania of addiction becomes an actual alternate universe. Watch your step.

Remainder, Tom McCarthy

Less flashy and aquamarine than some of the other books on this list, McCarthy’s first novel is its own kind of trippy. After an accident, a man is awarded an enormous sum of money. Plagued by a persistent and very specific vision of an apartment building and the people within, he uses his new fortune to buy a building, have it changed to the specifications of his vision, and hire actors to re-enact all the comings and goings of his imagined neighbors. The whole thing, as you might suspect, gets very weird very fast.

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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson

Ah, how could we leave off the best trip of them all (both literally and figuratively, of course)? Thompson’s hallucinogenic, ecstatic novel, touted as the “best book on the dope decade” by The New York Times Book Review, is full of delusions and indulgences, insanity and nightmares, all fueled by the “two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…. A quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.” Yikes.

The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

What could be trippier than waking up as an enormous insect? Well, maybe playing the violin for an enormous insect who desperately loves you, but the jury’s still out on that one.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, Douglas Adams

Though lots of weird things happen in these novels, we can’t help but think particularly of the Infinite Improbability Drive, whose side effects include Arthur’s limbs slowly detaching, Ford turning into a penguin (briefly), and “an infinite number of monkeys.”

A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick

Another trippy book about the junkies themselves, filled with surreal conversations, blurred faces and reality-melting drug trips, what makes this novel even wilder is that it is supposedly a vaguely fictionalized version of reality. At least, Dick once said in an interview, “Everything in A Scanner Darkly I actually saw.”

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10 Legendary Bad Girls of Literature

Sappho (Seventh Century BC)

Known both in her own time and today as one of Greece’s most important lyric poets, Sappho has also provided much of our current vocabulary surrounding female homosexuality. Hailing from the isle of Lesbos, she gives us both the noun “lesbian” and the descriptor “sapphic.” But Sappho didn’t just write love poems to people of both sexes — she also ran an academy for young, unmarried ladies that was dedicated to the cults of Eros and Aphrodite, and rumor has it that she was the object of some serious girl-on-girl worship, too. There’s little concrete biographical information to back up the millennia of gossip, and yet, all signs point to Sappho being Western literature’s first full-fledged female badass.

George Sand (1804-1876)

Jumping ahead a couple thousand years, we meet George Sand. This influential French writer was wildly prolific, producing dozens of novels, quite a few plays, several memoirs, and sheaves of literary criticism. Still, she found plenty of time for mischief. Sand (born Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin) was one of many 19th-century female authors who adopted a male pen name, but her gender-bending didn’t stop there. She was known for wearing men’s clothing in public, because she found it more practical than the Victorian-era gowns that constrained other women of the era, and smoked tobacco — a big no-no for ladies at the time. And then there was her romantic life: Married at 19 and divorced nine years later, Sand carried on affairs with some of her most illustrious contemporaries, including Prosper Mérimée and Frédéric Chopin.

Colette (1873-1954)

Ah, the French. We probably could have populated this whole list with them. (We haven’t, but we’re not through with them, either.) Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette was born in the twilight years of Sand’s life, and in many ways, their biographies are similar. Publishing her debut novels — the then-scandalous Claudine series — under the name of her bisexual first husband, Colette was eventually married three times and is known to have cheated on her second husband with his own son. A music-hall dancer who wrote about the lives of showgirls and courtesans, she was also open about her affairs with women and even kissed one female lover onstage as part of a pantomime at the Moulin Rouge.

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

Her best-known poem is the one about burning the candle at both ends, and boy did she. Beautiful Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote all sorts of transgressive poetry (and plays) in the first half of the 20th century, but she’s just as famous for practicing what she preached. A rebellious child, she went on to a lifetime of bisexual love affairs; her 26-year marriage to Eugen Jan Boissevain was an emphatically open one. Millay’s iconoclasm wasn’t confined to the sexual sphere, either — she was also an outspoken pacifist whose radicalism attracted all sort of popular ire.

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

Boasting the sharpest tongue at New York’s legendary Algonquin Round Table, Dorothy Parker was one of the 20th century’s great wits. A novelist, screenwriter, poet, and critic, she was known for her singular aphorisms, fearless willingness to offend her peers, and hard-partying personal life. Parker was married three times (twice to the same man, Alan Campbell, who she called “queer as a billy goat”), carrying on a slew of affairs on the side. She’s also become synonymous with the literary world’s liquor-fueled excess, her spotty late work reflecting the ravages of alcoholism. But, like her contemporary, Millay, Parker’s unconventional sensibility came paired with a deep and forward-thinking concern for social justice. The writer willed her estate to the Martin Luther King, Jr. foundation, and her ashes are buried at the NAACP’s Baltimore headquarters.

Anaïs Nin (1903-1977)

Erotica. Bigamy. Psychoanalysis. High-profile affairs. The biography of Delta of Venus author and scintillating memoirist Anaïs Nin has it all. Splitting her time between the literary crowds of Paris and New York, she didn’t achieve fame until her multi-volume diaries were published, beginning in the last decade of her life. It’s easy to see why the journals are so popular — they’re the perfect book-geek indulgence, chronicling her unconventional marriages and affairs with Henry Miller, Edmund Wilson, Gore Vidal, and featuring cameos by a who’s who of mid-century literati. Undeniably juicy, the diaries are also smart, thoughtful, and richly descriptive.

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)

The author of The Second Sex may be known as the mother of French feminism, but that’s just about the only maternal thing about Simone de Beauvoir. Freed from the confinement of marriage by her family’s inability to provide a dowry, she rejected religion as a teenager and eventually fell in with Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist crowd. He and Beauvoir maintained one of the most revolutionary relationships of their time. Although she refused his marriage proposal in 1931 and the couple never cohabited, they remained lovers and trusted colleagues until his death five decades later. While each was the other’s primary partner, both were open about their affairs, and sometimes they shared girlfriends. And if, for some reason, that isn’t enough to qualify Beauvoir as a bad girl, kindly recall that she also knew how to take a sexy photo.

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

Let’s get one thing straight: Committing suicide in the prime of her life isn’t what makes Sylvia Plath a bad girl, and depression and electroshock therapy shouldn’t be dismissed as risqué behavior. So, here’s what qualifies Plath in our mind: her frank writing about mental illness and sexuality in The Bell Jar, her soul-baring poetry, and her inspiring commitment “to be true to my own weirdnesses.” Oh, and there’s the fact that the first time she met husband Ted Hughes — who had a girlfriend at the time, mind you — she liked him so much that she bit his cheek and drew blood. Now that’s badass.

Kathy Acker (1947-1997)

The first thing you need to know about Kathy Acker is that her postmodern 1984 novel, Blood and Guts in High School, is a cult classic that helped inspire the riot grrrl movement. Combining purposefully plagiarized passages with a plot that features incest, abortion, and the queer outlaw French writer Jean Genet, the book flummoxed critics, divided feminists, and managed to piss off just about everyone. Her later writing was no less difficult or controversial, continuing to incorporate lifted passages, critical theory, and even pornography. The second thing you need to know about Acker is that she grew up wanting to be pirate. Although she died in 1997 of breast cancer, presumably without ever captaining a rebel ship, we think we can safely say that in many inspiring ways (not least her appropriation of other texts), she became one.

Alice Walker (b. 1944)

She may not be bad in the same way as Dorothy Parker and Colette, but make no mistake — Alice Walker is a badass. Her novel The Color Purple, which addresses the economic and sexual oppression of poor, black women, was nothing short of revolutionary, and its unflinching depiction of sexual violence continues to make it a target for censors. But Walker’s fearlessness isn’t limited to her writing; a civil rights activist in the ’60s who withstood Ku Klux Klan harassment after her interracial marriage in 1965, she was arrested alongside fellow bad-girl author Maxine Hong Kingston in a 2003 protest against the Iraq War.

–> COPAS from http://flavorwire.com

The 20 Most Iconic Book Covers Ever

Catch 22, Joseph Heller, 1961. Cover design by Paul Bacon. As a designer, Bacon was known for pioneering the “Big Book Look,” characterized by the title and author’s name in large, strong print, accompanied by a small conceptual illustration.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925. Francis Cugat, a relatively unknown artist at the time, was commissioned to design the cover of the novel while Fitzgerald was still working on it — when Fitzgerald saw the cover, finished before the novel, he liked it so well that he told his publisher that he had “written it into” the book. Hemingway, on the other hand, hated it.

Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, 1957. Though some contemporary readers might connect the book with the image of a bronzed Atlas on his knees, we think the original is much more resonant.

A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, 1962. On the other hand, it is this 1972 iteration of Burgess’s classic novel, designed by David Pelham, that has truly become iconic. The dust jacket of the first edition, at least in our minds, leaves something to be desired.

The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 1951. Salinger was notoriously extremely picky about the art that would grace his novels. The only words that were to be allowed were the author’s name and the name of the book — no blurbs, no quotes, no autobiography — and he preferred simple designs, just lines and color (think Franny & Zooey). It seems he liked this one, crazed carousel horse and all, though he notoriously refused to sign a copy for the designer, E. Michael Mitchell.

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, 1952. The artist, Edward McKnight Kauffer, was well-known for his avant-garde design and work creating posters (something like 140 of them) for the London Underground.

1984, George Orwell, 1949. There are so many covers for 1984 that it is a little strange to think of any one as the iconic version — in our heads, it’s more of an amalgamation, but this was the original, and one of the best.

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960. Designed by Shirley Smith, some have criticized this cover as being too simple. However, that hasn’t stopped it from gracing the dorm room walls of book nerds everywhere.

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, 1932. There’s something about this earth-from-above cover, designed by Leslie Holland, that makes us more nervous than any of the others.

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, 1966. When designer S. Neil Fujita first showed his bright red hatpin cover idea to Capote, the author had a quibble. “It can’t be red, because it wasn’t a new death, it didn’t just happen,” he complained. So Fujita changed the color to purple, and added a “funereal” black border, which pleased Capote immensely.

The Godfather, Mario Puzo, 1969. The design for this cover was also done by the inimitable S. Neil Fujita. His heavy, gothic typeface and puppeteer’s hand were carried over to the imagery for the film, so the look may be one of the most universally iconic on this list.

Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller, 1949. The cover was designed by Social Realist painter Joseph Hirsch.

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955. Though Lolita has appeared in hundreds of incarnations, this juicy 1973 cover (with that luscious, looping ‘L’) is probably the most beloved. Discounting those emblazoned with the heart shaped Kubrick glasses, of course.

On The Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957. This cover, from the first British edition, was designed by Len Deighton, who became a prodigious author in his own right. We just can’t get over all that text on the left: “Liquor, Girls, Fun, Jazz” — Would it be so wrong to add an “Oh my!”?

Psycho, Robert Bloch, 1959. Like The Godfather, Tony Palladino’s cover art for Psycho made it to the promotional material for the big-screen adaptation, which has added to its iconic status. However, we contend that the enormous, sideways, slashed-through title would have held up on its own, Hitchcock or no Hitchcock.

 

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey, 1962. Another design by the prolific Paul Bacon, who is clearly playing with colors.

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, 1939. Elmer Hader, who made a living illustrating and (in some cases) writing children’s books with his wife, Berta. Steinbeck fell in love with their 1939 tale Billy Butter, and asked that Hader design the cover for his next novel. Hader also eventually created the cover art for East of Eden (1952) and The Winter of Our Discontent (1961).

Rabbit, Run, John Updike, 1960. The fact that this cover is almost nausea-inducing hasn’t stopped it from becoming one of the all-time classics.

Lord of the Flies, William Golding, 1954. We think it’s fair to say that most kids since the 1950′s have seen that jungle in their dreams at least once.

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 1953. Designed by Joe Pernaciaro, this cover has never ceased to frighten us.

 

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