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Absent Founders: Ibrahim Yaakob and the Rise of the Malay Left. (Part 3 of 3)
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Under such turbulent and variable circumstances, Ibrahim Yaakob felt that his best course of action would be to leave Malaya and join his fellow Nusantara counterparts in neighbouring Indonesia.
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But while Ibrahim Yaakob was afforded relatively more freedom in Sukarno's Indonesia, the same could not be said for the other radical leftists left behind in Malaya itself.
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By the year 1948, Ibrahim was no longer a figure in Malayan politics.Having been absent from Malaya since 1945, Ibrahim (like many of the other radicals) was not able to contribute during some of the most critical episodes of its newly-emerging history such as the Malayan Union crisis of 1946 which gave the new Conservative nationalists the window of opportunity that they had been looking for so long.
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Dr. Burhanuddin al-Helmy and Ibrahim Yaakob had thus managed to save what little was left of the PKMM by their decision to relocate it to Indonesia.While in Indonesia the PKMM was based at Jogjakarta, under the leadership of Ibrahim Yaakob.The movement was renamed the Kesatuan Malaya Merdeka (Independent Malaya Union) and Ibrahim Yaakob spent much of the years to come helping the Indonesians in their campaign to discredit the newly created Malayan Federation under Tunku Abdul Rahman as a neo-colonial entity.
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But this transition could only be achieved via the declaration of Emergency, from which would emerge a Malaya that Ibrahim could scarcely have imagined possible.

On the 31st of August, 1957, under a state of National Emergency, the Federation of Malaya was born.
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In time President Sukarno whom Ibrahim and the Malay nationalists had once admired so began to show his true colours by declaring the need for 'guided democracy' and the concentration of power at the centre.Sukarno's own ambitious nature manifested itself in time when he elevated himself to the position of President for life with the somewhat grandiose title of Pemimpin Besar Revolusi Doktor Engineer Haji Ahmad Sukarno.
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In the midst of these upheavals, the different political factions in Indonesia had little time or concern for Ibrahim Yaakob and his band of Malayan nationalists who wanted to struggle for the reunification of Malaya and Indonesia.
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During the period of confrontation between Indonesia and Malaysia (1963-65), Ibrahim Yaakob aided the Indonesian effort as a propagandist for the Indonesian cause, calling for the reunification of Malaya with the rest of Indonesia.
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At a time when the Malay masses were still largely locked in a feudal mind-set which made them cling to their rulers and the British as their protectors and patrons, Ibrahim was one of the few Malay radicals who had come to realise that they were not only traitors to the Malay people, but that they were in fact the enemy.In the Sedjarah, he would describe the age of Colonial-Capitalism as the darkest period of the history of the Indon-Malay peoples.
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Ibrahim would conclude his account in his Sedjarah by returning to the beginning: that Malaya was always part of a broader geo-cultural entity known as the Indon-Malay archipelago, Nusantara, Malaya Raya (Greater Malaya) and that there was where her future lies as well.
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But Ibrahim was no longer in Malaya to put these plans into action.
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Exile and Absence: Ibrahim Yaakob as one of the forgotten founders of the Malayan Project.

Ibrahim Yaakob would spend the rest of his days in exile in Indonesia, leading the tattered remnants of what was left of the PKMM after its leadership felt that no more could be done in Malaya.