57 Facts About Sjafruddin Prawiranegara

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara was an Indonesian statesman and economist.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara served in various roles during his career, including as head of government in the Emergency Government of the Republic of Indonesia, as Minister of Finance in several cabinets, and as the first Governor of Bank Indonesia.

In December 1948, a Dutch offensive captured the Indonesian revolutionary leaders including President Sukarno, resulting in Sjafruddin Prawiranegara activating contingency plans and forming the Emergency Government of the Republic of Indonesia on 22 December.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara then became the first governor of Bank Indonesia, where his general accommodative approach to foreign capital and opposition to nationalization caused tensions with the Sukarno government and economists such as Sumitro Djojohadikusumo.

The rebellion was defeated, and after three years of guerrilla warfare Sjafruddin Prawiranegara surrendered to the government in 1961.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara was born in Anyer Kidul to an aristocratic santri family, in what is present day Serang Regency, Banten, on 28 February 1911.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara was the son of a Bantenese father and a Bantenese-Minangkabau mother.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara's father, R Arsyad Prawiraatmadja, was a district chief from a family of officials in Banten and was a member of the Sarekat Islam and Budi Utomo organizations.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara's maternal great-grandfather was a descendant of royalty in the Pagaruyung Kingdom, who had been exiled to Banten after the end of the Padri War.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara began his education at a Europeesche Lagere School in Serang, before continuing to a Meer Uitgebreid Lager Onderwijs in Madiun.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara, who had developed strong nationalist sentiments, rejected the moderate demands presented by the 1936 Soetardjo Petition, and in 1940 refused to join the Stadswacht, the Dutch colonial militia.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara founded a war relief effort organization, where he served as secretary until the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies began in 1942.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara often visited Sutan Sjahrir, a key leader in the resistance against Japanese occupation, and according to Sjafruddin, he was often wrongly regarded as a member of Sjahrir's movement.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara returned to a cabinet position as Minister of Prosperity under Mohammad Hatta's non-party cabinet starting from 29 January 1948.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara persuaded Hatta of the need to issue the Oeang Republik Indonesia, the predecessor to the modern Indonesian rupiah, both to finance the Indonesian government during the revolution and to generate a degree of legitimacy to the international community.

When Hatta hesitated, Sjafruddin Prawiranegara remarked to him that "if [Hatta] was caught by the Dutch he would be hanged not as a forger but as a rebel".

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara called for political parties to define a policy to ensure that each party's members would follow a specific party line.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara was initially uncertain of the authenticity of the news, and of his legal authority to form a government.

Shortly after the pronouncement, Sjafruddin Prawiranegara's group left Halaban, with the military leadership heading north towards Aceh.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara arrived there on 9 January 1949, and the split groups caught up in the following weeks.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara left after the meeting, but a number of leaders stayed the night there and were killed in a Dutch ambush at dawn the next day.

The PDRI stifled Dutch plans to present a lack of an Indonesian government as a fait accompli to the UN, with Sjafruddin Prawiranegara giving instructions to the Indonesian delegation at the UN.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara thought that the exiled Republican leaders in Bangka underestimated the strength of the PDRI.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara returned his mandate to Sukarno in Yogyakarta on 13 July 1949.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara was given extensive powers in this position, since the Republican government had poor communications with Sumatra and only held tenuous control.

Additionally, Sjafruddin Prawiranegara assured officials who had worked for the Dutch that the Republican government would not permit reprisals.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara's unpopularity was compounded by the retention of a number of Dutch officials who held significant powers within the finance ministry.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara was a critic of the cabinet's economic policies, writing in a June 1951 pamphlet that economic decline from the government's policies was "only temporarily hidden by the pseudo-welfare of high export prices".

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara opposed this on the grounds that the bank's Indonesian personnel were too inexperienced to manage it.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara was initially reluctant to take up the post, having planned to retire from public life and enter the private sector to earn enough for his children's education.

In BI's first annual report, Sjafruddin Prawiranegara argued for the bank to continue commercial banking activities, citing a shortage of access to banking systems and the lack of a capital market in Indonesia at that time.

In designing BI's statutes, Sjafruddin Prawiranegara included a clause which would manage the bank's reserves of gold and foreign currency at 20 percent of currency issued.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara maintained his post after NU opted to back his second term, aided by favours given to NU-related businesses by fellow Masyumi member and sitting finance minister Wibisono.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara went to Palembang and held discussions with the potential dissident Colonel Barlian, who was the regional commander of the armed forces in South Sumatra.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara wrote an open letter to Sukarno, which voiced his opposition to the "fascist" Guided Democracy and called for a return to the 1945 Constitution.

Col Ahmad Husein, with Sjafruddin Prawiranegara being named as both its prime minister and finance minister.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara had previously attempted to convince the military officers to exercise restraint and avoid a civil war, but he eventually agreed to take part in PRRI.

Once he learned of PRRI's military collapse, Sjafruddin Prawiranegara vowed in anger to "stay here in the jungle" and adding that "it won't be the first time".

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara surrendered PRRI's assets in form of 29 kilograms of gold bullion.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara was initially not imprisoned, due to a 1961 declaration of amnesty for PRRI members by Sukarno, and for a time he stayed around Medan.

Disillusioned, Sjafruddin Prawiranegara left active politics and tended to express himself more through religious organizations such as the Indonesian Pesantren Foundation and the Mubaligh Corps.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara maintained an interest in economics, founding the Indonesian Association of Muslim Businessmen in July 1967, and he generally supported the economic policies of the technocrats under Suharto such as Widjojo Nitisastro and Mohammad Sadli.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara then used Friday sermons in mosques to preach against corruption under Suharto.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara opposed the government monopoly on hajj pilgrimages, considering it inefficient and prone to fraud and corruption.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara opposed the government-backed Parmusi and the newly formed Islamic parties, comparing them unfavorably with PKI.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara was not opposed to Pancasila in itself, and accepted it as a founding principle for the state and constitution, but could not accept its extension as the basis of all social and political organizations.

Unlike Sumitro, who endorsed state intervention to develop an industrial base, Sjafruddin Prawiranegara doubted that state-owned enterprises would be efficient or productive.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara's reasoning was that the fiscal surpluses of the early 1950s were temporary, and therefore the fiscal reserves should be spent on expanding national productive capacity instead of a general monetary injection into the economy, and regarding agrarian development, Sjafruddin Prawiranegara viewed the needed investment to improve national food security as much lower than that of industrialization.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara believed that many Muslims had joined together with the communists due to a misunderstanding of communism, and considered Marxism to be contrary to the Constitution of Indonesia.

Still, following liberal modernist Islam, he argued that modern Muslims should be allowed to diverge from Muhammad on worldly issues, and hence Sjafruddin Prawiranegara disagreed with the interpretation of bank interest as riba.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara strongly argued against a Pakistan-like Islamic state, considering it as imposing Islam on other Indonesians.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara married Tengku Halimah, daughter of the district chief of Buahbatu and a descendant of a King of Pagaruyung, whom he had met in Bandung, on 31 January 1941.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara had a limited grasp of Arabic, which he learned in the 1950s.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara died in Jakarta of a heart attack on 15 February 1989.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara was buried in a simple grave at Tanah Kusir Cemetery in South Jakarta.

Anwar quoted Sjafruddin Prawiranegara as saying, shortly prior to his death, that Indonesia was being colonized by itself.

Sjafruddin Prawiranegara was made a National Hero of Indonesia on 8 November 2011 by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, after the proposal to make him one was rejected twice due to Sjafruddin Prawiranegara's PRRI involvement, and historians had to provide evidence to government officials that it was not a rebellion against the country.