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JAKARTA
POST, 05 Juli 2013
The
Canadian author and historian, Margaret Macmillan, who wrote the seminal work
Paris 1919 on the six-month long international peace conference in Versailles,
France, at the end of World War I, noted that a Vietnamese kitchen assistant
working at the Ritz Hotel in Paris unsuccessfully had his country recognized by
the great powers among the swirling hustle, including France, Britain and the
emergent United States.
The kitchen assistant, a gangly, thin but determined 28-year-old, was Ho Chi Minh. In September 1945, he declared Vietnam independent following the surrender of Japanese forces to the US at Tokyo Bay.
Later, in the 1950s, as French colonial forces sought to regain control over Indo-China, Ho Chi Minh and his “rag tag of black pajama and sandals” guerillas defeated the pride of the French intellectual, bureaucratic and military elite at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954.
Aided by the Vietnamese army military legend, Vo Nguyen Giap, Ho Chi Minh rose to worldwide political and military fame.
Ho Chi Minh participated in the April 1955 Asian African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, along with Jawaharlal Nehru (India), Zhou Enlai (China), Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana) and Sukarno.
In the early 1960s, Ho Chi Minh visited Indonesia and was awarded an honorary doctorate at Bandung. Ho Chi Minh spoke of the most important education he received; not from schools, colleges or universities but from “the school of life”, which tested his determination, resilience and moral strength. Sukarno, who attended the ceremony in Bandung, later spoke to students in Jakarta, which I attended as a second year student at the University of Indonesia.
Sukarno spoke warmly about “this simple and humble man who never graduated from college or university” but possessed the determined quality of humility and “whose only sin was to remind France to live up to its revolutionary ethos of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite”. I have never forgotten that image of both Ho Chi Minh and Sukarno, first generation leaders of Vietnam and Indonesia who wrested power from, rather than being granted independence by, a stubborn but receding colonial power.
I have often wondered how third and fourth generation Vietnamese, Indonesian — and indeed African and Latin American — European and American leaders view the historical spectrum facing each country’s current predicament?
Can they recapture the spirit that once moved their forefathers to bring the best of their intellectual courage and moral fiber to the fore?
Can and will they reinvigorate the quality of public service in their personal, social and professional conduct as leaders?
Can they withstand the forces of predatory financial power and greed that erode their determination to maintain political and cultural space that sustain their power of humility?
Will they heed John F. Kennedy’s call in his inaugural address more than 50 years ago that “those who will not allow peaceful revolution to be possible will make violent revolution inevitable?” ●
The kitchen assistant, a gangly, thin but determined 28-year-old, was Ho Chi Minh. In September 1945, he declared Vietnam independent following the surrender of Japanese forces to the US at Tokyo Bay.
Later, in the 1950s, as French colonial forces sought to regain control over Indo-China, Ho Chi Minh and his “rag tag of black pajama and sandals” guerillas defeated the pride of the French intellectual, bureaucratic and military elite at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954.
Aided by the Vietnamese army military legend, Vo Nguyen Giap, Ho Chi Minh rose to worldwide political and military fame.
Ho Chi Minh participated in the April 1955 Asian African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, along with Jawaharlal Nehru (India), Zhou Enlai (China), Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana) and Sukarno.
In the early 1960s, Ho Chi Minh visited Indonesia and was awarded an honorary doctorate at Bandung. Ho Chi Minh spoke of the most important education he received; not from schools, colleges or universities but from “the school of life”, which tested his determination, resilience and moral strength. Sukarno, who attended the ceremony in Bandung, later spoke to students in Jakarta, which I attended as a second year student at the University of Indonesia.
Sukarno spoke warmly about “this simple and humble man who never graduated from college or university” but possessed the determined quality of humility and “whose only sin was to remind France to live up to its revolutionary ethos of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite”. I have never forgotten that image of both Ho Chi Minh and Sukarno, first generation leaders of Vietnam and Indonesia who wrested power from, rather than being granted independence by, a stubborn but receding colonial power.
I have often wondered how third and fourth generation Vietnamese, Indonesian — and indeed African and Latin American — European and American leaders view the historical spectrum facing each country’s current predicament?
Can they recapture the spirit that once moved their forefathers to bring the best of their intellectual courage and moral fiber to the fore?
Can and will they reinvigorate the quality of public service in their personal, social and professional conduct as leaders?
Can they withstand the forces of predatory financial power and greed that erode their determination to maintain political and cultural space that sustain their power of humility?
Will they heed John F. Kennedy’s call in his inaugural address more than 50 years ago that “those who will not allow peaceful revolution to be possible will make violent revolution inevitable?” ●
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