Royal revolt at prospect of sultana on throne
Brothers and sisters of Indonesian monarch threaten to ‘drive wife and daughters out of palace’
AN INDONESIAN sultan who defied centuries of tradition by declaring that his daughter will succeed him is facing an uprising by his relations.
Hamengku Buwono X, the Sultan of Jogjakarta, Java, announced in 2015 that Princess Mangkubumi, his eldest daughter, is to succeed him, much to the consternation of his relations.
It has since emerged the 72-year-old sultan’s brothers and sisters are outraged by the decision. They are now refusing to attend royal events and have threatened to expel his wife and daughters after his death.
The modernising sultan, who is also governor of the modern Special Region of Jogjakarta, ascended to the throne in 1989, and discontinued the polygamist tradition of Javanese royalty having multiple wives and concubines. In 2006, when Mount Merapi, the most active volcano in Indonesia, began spewing a deadly cloud of hot ash, gases and rock fragments, he told locals to heed the warnings of scientists rather than his own palace-appointed fortune tellers about when to evacuate.
However, his 2015 decision to pass the sultanate to the eldest of his five daughters instead of a male descendant has caused the biggest controversy yet.
“We have made a family commitment that we will not fight now,” GBPH Prabukusumo, one of Hamengku Buwono X’s brothers, told the BBC.
“But when the sultan has left this world, we have an agreement with the people that we will drive his wife and his daughters out of the palace.”
Kanjeng Raden Tumenggung Jatiningrat, one of the sultan’s cousins, told Agence France-presse: “A female sultan is an impossibility. One symbol in this palace is a rooster – so if we have a queen, should we change it to a hen?”
He added that a sultana could not oversee rituals in the mosque traditionally led by men.
The sultan is the last monarch with any real political power in Indonesia.
It is said that the message to make his daughter the heir to the throne was conveyed to the sultan in a dream.
“The average person on the streets of Jogjakarta seems to accept that story. There is such a high level of respect for the sultan that whatever he wants, everyone else will follow through with it,” Warwick Purser, the consul general for Mexico in Jogjakarta, told The Daily Telegraph. “It’s caused a great deal of division in the palace because it would be quite a revolutionary thing for a woman to sit on the throne.”
However, the sultan has apparently taken steps to quash any rebellion. Insiders say he plans to abdicate and install the princess – whom he recently renamed Gusti Kanjeng Ratu Mangkubumi “The One Who Holds the Earth” – into the role.