Indonesia: The Master Builder

An amateur architect as well as a semipro statesman, Indonesia's President Sukarno often seems bored by the problems of building up his country's economy and feeding its population. Building up the skyline is much more pleasing, and it costs about the same. Last week Sukarno was still working hard at one of his theories: "Asians must show they can do big things as well as anybody else."
Currently under construction in Djakarta is the Merdeka (Freedom) Mosque, which is to be the world's biggest. The diameter of Merdeka's cupola will be 147 ft., or 40 ft. wider than the cupola of Istanbul's Hagia Sophia. Merdeka will hold 100,000 worshipers, twice the capacity of Lahore's Shah Badi Mosque. Since unbalancing the budget is also something Sukarno does big, part of the mosque's $30 million cost is being raised by more or less forced public subscription.
Raising money for building in Djakarta is like planning a charity ball in Manhattan : there is plenty of high-sounding competition. The National Monument Fund, for instance, is building two monuments. A national monument in the shape of a 300-ft. obelisk is going up across from Sukarno's palace. Also in construction is a 120-ft. West Irian monument memorializing the recent diplomatic conquest of Dutch New Guinea. Designed by the Big Builder himself, the West Irian monument is topped by a 30-ft. bronze man breaking out of his chains. Meanwhile government spending on social welfare has dropped from $6,000,000 in 1956 to $1,373,000 last year—hardly a monument.
One Sukarno project is already finished —the handsome, impressive $17 million complex built to house that monument to international acrimony through sports, the recently completed Asian Games. It has been renamed Bung (Brother) Karno Sports Center. Since the whole of any monument is only equal to the sum of its parts, the parts have also been renamed: Bung Karno Sports Hall, Bung Karno Stadium, Bung Karno Swimming Pool, Bung Karno Hockey Stadium. Most of the 50,000 citizens displaced by the Bung Karno Sports Center are still living in Djakarta shantytowns. About their only recourse is to pray at the world's biggest mosque, if it is ever completed.

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