'Don't expect much from Cabinet'

Scholars have warned the public that they should not anchor much hope on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's administration, as from the outset it has shown signs of incompetence.

In their year-end assessment of political, economic and social affairs for 2004, researchers of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) said, to date, the new administration's performance had been unimpressive and, moreover, it appeared to be at a loss as to what to do next.

Syamsuddin Haris of LIPI's center for political research said that, although the administration had been handed political legitimacy, it failed to grasp what the public actually desired and, so far, could not come up with a tangible program, nor targets that it could work on for the next five years.

"Instead, we get the impression that each minister works within their own framework, by drawing up programs relevant only to their own field of work," Syamsuddin said on Thursday.

LIPI is a government think tank, but has always been critical of government policies.

He said that, as a result of such blinkered vision, the Cabinet had spent its first few months in office engaged in efforts to recognize and identify the country's problems.

"In his first speech, Susilo said his Cabinet was still studying the country's problems. This is a setback. As part of the previous administrations of Megawati Soekarnoputri and Abdurrahman Wahid, he should have grasped the problems earlier," Syamsuddin said.

He also said that in the anticorruption drive, which tops the new administration's priorities, the President was only good at making promises.

"We barely see a focused, measured and integrated approach in the fight against corruption. The drive has been limited to rhetoric and ritual," he said, adding that the only tangible effort was the publication of state officials' wealth reports.

He said that if the President had failed to gain momentum in his first three months in office, that would reflect poorly on his chances of success later on.

And, "If he fails, then the House of Representatives, the Nationhood Coalition in particular, will have enough ammunition to attack him," Syamsuddin warned, adding that the first strike would probably be launched soon after the government hiked the price of fuel early next year.

Widjaya Adi of the institute's economic studies division shared similar concerns, saying that coordination was the Cabinet's Achilles heel.

"Coordination between ministers is poor. We were shown the proof when one minister decided to raise the tax for the business community but another minister said it should be lowered. That is not a promising sign," he said.

Widjaya also said the so-called shock therapy that the government had initiated early on would not last long, and was only carried out to meet short-term goals.

"I am not sure that it will prevail after three months," he said.