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Indonesian President Yudhoyono’s second term cabinet

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In Brief

The newly formed cabinet under the leadership of the popularly elected Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) has been dubbed a ‘return the favour’ cabinet (kabinet balas budi), a cabinet of political mates (kabinet perkoncoan), a rainbow cabinet (kabinet pelangi), and a power/cake sharing cabinet (kabinet bagi-bagi kekuasaan atau kue).

The idioms used to describe the new cabinet convey the three big concerns about the structure of the cabinet.

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The first is the high level of representation of political parties instead of technocrats in the cabinet. The second is that the ministerial selection is still dominated more by political than professional considerations. The third is the accommodation of most of the political parties which gained seats in the parliament, and a weakened ‘opposition’ side. The cabinet is also very large.

Twenty of the thirty four cabinet posts are filled by political party officials. Six of the nine parties in the cabinet have representatives in the cabinet: the Demokrat Party with six posts, PKS with four, Golkar with three, PAN with three, PPP with two, and PKB with two. PKS, PAN, and PKB have their party chairmen in the cabinet, while PAN has its secretary general and Golkar has its vice chair. Five of the six political parties are members of the coalition that supported SBY’s presidential bid earlier this year. Many of Golkar’s top officials support SBY, although the Party officially did not. These six parties control around three quarters of the national parliamentary seats. All in all there is a high degree of pessimism among critics about whether the new SBY administration will be able to push major reform forward in Indonesia.

These concerns have some merit. But they fail to take into account the political reality in Indonesia. It is difficult for any Indonesian president to have an effective government without accommodating the interests of a sufficient range of the political parties. It is true that SBY won a landside in a popular and direct election. To get legislation through will require more than the popular support, particularly where the situation requires him to push for unpopular policies. There is no way to detach the desire for a more effective government from the need to accommodate various political interests. Ignoring that would make the SBY administration vulnerable to deadlock in the parliament and this is the risk that he was not willing to take.

The cabinet may not be ideal but at least it is fashioned out of political realism and reasonableness and this may promise more not less success in advancing reform.

There is similar parliamentary support for SBY in this second term as there was in his first term. But in his first term, the parties which supported SBY controlled less than 50 per cent of the parliamentary seats. With the success of Jusuf Kalla in capturing Golkar chairmanship and the decision of several political parties to jump on SBY’s bandwagon, in effect only PDI-P and PDS are left opposing the SBY administration. Now there is concern about a weak opposition and the lack of checks-and-balances.

Yet SBY will not be able to automatically rely on support from the members of parliament from parties represented in his cabinet. This is one reason why the SBY camp in these past several weeks attempted to court PDI-P into the cabinet too. The fluidity of support from his so called ‘coalition’ partners requires SBY to seek support beyond a simple majority of the parliament.

Indeed, the chances are that it will be even more difficult in the second term than it was in the first for SBY to lock in parliamentary support. For one thing, intense internal party conflict within Golkar, PKB, PPP, and PAN is an ongoing assumption in the political landscape. For another, the change of the electoral system from a semi-open-list in 2004 to a pure-open-list system in 2009 meant that MPs are less beholden to their party’s support because of more reliance on their own popularity, resources, and networks, and potentially more independent from party leadership and control.

The political checks-and-balances in SBY’s second term will not come primarily from the formal ‘opposition’ but rather from MPs from across the range of political parties aligned with SBY beyond his own Demokrat Party.

The test will be in how SBY and his cabinet handle high public expectations, as well as intense scrutiny and public criticism. He has the political support and public legitimacy; he has also brought on board experienced, tested, and capable technocrats such as Mangkusubroto, Mulyani, and Pangestu in his cabinet; and loyalists such Silalahi, Rajasa, Yusgiantoro, and Mallarangeng. The rest will be up to him, and his leadership.

Sunny Tanuwidjaja is a Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relation at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta.

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