Page 84 - BUKU A CENTURY OF PARLIAMENTARY LIFE IN INDONESIA

FROM VOLKSRAAD TO THE CENTRAL INDONESIAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE
(1917–1949)

the State of Madura on January 23, the State of East Sumatra on March
24, the State of Pasundan on April 26, and the State of East Java on No-
vember 26 — all of which were part of the Republic of Indonesia under
the Linggarjati Agreement.

Just like with other puppet states outside the Republic of Indonesia, the
Netherlands also offered a democratic and prosperous government to
Indonesia.

The offer also served as an invitation to create a People’s Representative
Council consisting of all elements of society, as was the case in the State
of East Indonesia.

For the Netherlands, if Soekarno-Hatta could offer a promise of demo-
cracy, so could the Netherlands provide a more appropriate democrat-
ic system for Indonesia. The Queen of the Netherlands, Wilhelmina, in
her speech via radio broadcast on February 3, 1948, conveyed her main
propositions to the Indonesian people.

She was optimistic about the possibility of a cooperation between the
Indonesian and the Dutch peoples to form a democratic government in
the form of a federal state. She also emphasized the path that Indonesia
could take to achieve independence, namely through a cooperative rela-
tionship with the Netherlands. Afterwards, based on Queen Wilhelmina’s
speech, the Netherlands would propose a United States of Indonesia to
the United Nations for complete independence. Surely, this was different
from what the nationalists had in mind.

The BP KNIP sessions in the post-Renville Agreement period were
filled with regular agendas without any record of responses to Queen
Wilhelmina’s speech. During this period, BP KNIP had also moved to
the Indonesian capital city of Yogyakarta, making coordination and
sessions that became more intense after the Renville Agreement easier
to hold.

During the reign of the Hatta Cabinet, BP KNIP’s relations with the go-
vernment went quite intensively. PM Hatta specifically encouraged the
ministers in his cabinet to hold frequent meetings with BP KNIP. Hatta
had held the BP KNIP in high regard as a representation of the demo-
cratic practice in Indonesia. Although Hatta’s cabinet was a presidential
cabinet, Hatta never dismissed BP KNIP as a legislative body that could
strengthen the government’s performance.

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