ON MARCH 9, i962, President Sukarno conferred ministerial rank upon the speaker and vice-speakers of the parliament and upon the vice-chairmen of the Provisional People's Consulatative Congress. Among these appointees were D. N. Aidit, Chairman of the PKI, the Partai Komunis Indonesia (Indonesian Communist Party), and a vice-chairman of the People's Congress, and M. H. Lukman, First Deputy Chairman of the PKI and a vice-speaker of parliament. Aidit and Lukman will thus attend meetings of the so-called State Leadership, a principal executive advisory body, which includes, among others, other cabinet ministers. Technically, the Communists are still not formally represented in the actual cabinet itself, but the March 9 appointments might well be considered as having brought the PKI significantly closer to Communist coalition' government which has been the party's aim since the veteran Communist Muso, then newly arrived from Moscow, announced his Gottwald plan for the PKI in August i948. Yet, such is the peculiar position of the PKI in Indonesia today that this apparent new advance of its leaders, far from augmenting, or being a recognition of, Communist influence in the country, is actually but another indication of how effectively that influence has been rendered sterile and of how the party leaders have been neutralized by the transformation of the governmental structure in the past three years. Ironically, the process of containing the party has been made possible by PKI strategy itself. After the party's disastrous coup at Madiun in East Java in the latter part of i948, its fortunes declined sharply and the new rise of the PKI since then (by April i962, on the occasion of the party's seventh national congress, Aidit claimed over 2 million members) was made possible primarily by its close identification with the left-wing nationalistic ideology that has increasingly dominated the character of government in the past decade.' This identification has particularly involved close support for Sukarno and his political mystique. By such tactics as enthusiastic endorsement of Sukarno's concept of Indonesian Socialism and andimperialism, by advocacy of radical nationalist solutions to the country's many economic problems, and by participation in parliament and in the drive