Give one thumb up for Cabinet mini-reshuffle

Endy M. Bayuni, Jakarta

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono earns one thumbs up for reshuffling his Cabinet. Albeit limited, the President revamped his economics team, considered one of the weakest links in his administration this past year. He brought back Boediono, an able economist widely accredited for restoring macroeconomic stability during the Megawati years, into the team as the new chief economics minister, and put Sri Mulyani Indrawati, formerly state minister of national development planning, in charge of the Ministry of Finance. One thing we can say is that the President now has a more credible economics team than the previous one.

It could have been two thumbs up for the President had he gone a little further and replaced some of the problematic and non- performing ministers with more capable and competent people. Instead, he chose to do the bare minimum, even after keeping the nation guessing as to his intentions these past two months.

He removed only three ministers (Alwi Shihab, Andung Nitimihardja and Jusuf Anwar) and brought in Boediono (coordinating economics minister), politicians Paskah Suzetta (national planning minister) and Erman Soeparno (labor minister). He shifted two ministers, Aburizal Bakrie (from coordinating economics minister to coordinating minister for people's welfare) and Fahmi Idris (from labor to industry).

After the announcement on Monday night in Yogyakarta, there was a nagging feeling that he could, and should, have done a lot more. Worse, he squandered a golden opportunity to make up for his mistakes shortly after his election victory in October 2004, when he formed his United Indonesia Cabinet.

We knew then that most of the ministers he recruited were not really his first choice. Rather, they were imposed on him by the political parties who had supported him in the polls. But he gave away more than was merited in rewarding handsomely some of the small political parties whose contribution to his election victory was questionable.

Critics then saw this as a sign of his weakness, but hoped that with the passage of time, he would be more adept at political negotiations. Come "evaluation" time -- one year later he promised -- he would replace some of the ministers who had shown shortcomings, appointing new ministers on the basis of their competence and not on their political backers. Some hope that turned out to be.

This is a President who, in spite of his weakness of riding on the back of a small political party, won 62 percent of the vote in Indonesia's first direct presidential election. He had a strong mandate from the people to do all that was necessary to make this country stronger. And, as any school child will tell you, this is a presidential system of government, which grants the elected president a free hand in picking his/her own Cabinet. He had the constitutional prerogative but he did not use it to his full advantage.

The last 12 months have been sufficient for the public to judge which ministers have performed up to par, which ones are on the borderline, and which have failed. And we all know that there are more than three ministers who should have been replaced in the reshuffle. The problems of the Cabinet do not lie solely with the economics team as the reshuffle would suggest, but with particular individuals who clearly do not belong there.

What is probably most disturbing about this whole episode is that the President seems to be endlessly beholden to the political parties. In October 2004, he could not pick his own team and had to accept their nominations. More than 12 months later, even after some ministers glaringly failed in their tasks, he still could not replace them.

That the President is heavily indebted to Vice President Jusuf Kalla is widely accepted. Therefore, Kalla's Golkar, which has the largest faction in the House of Representatives, is heavily represented in the Cabinet, as it probably should be.

But does the President really owe the other political parties so much that he cannot even reduce their strong representation in his United Indonesia Cabinet?

This is probably the only other time in his five-year term in office when the President could come up with a credible Cabinet and make a real difference to his overall performance.

The President's fixation with forging a coalition of as many political parties as possible to give a semblance, but false sense, of national unity got the better of him. And it comes at the expense of creating a potentially more competent Cabinet.

The lengthy period it took for him to make up his mind -- to make the slightest changes to his Cabinet -- only lends credence to the widely held public perception of a President who has difficulties in making decisions; a President who is yet to grasp the art of political negotiations. Still, let us give credit to the President for putting together a more acceptable economics team. Rather than engaging in speculations of what could have been, we should give our support and wish the President and his new team well in their tasks. Let us look on the bright side. If the President had a bigger change in mind, we could be waiting forever.