Healing time in Jakarta

INDONESIAN president-elect Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has been busy taking soundings on choices for his Cabinet, which can have a more decisive impact on the nation's recovery program than was the case with previous administrations. But he has at the same time shown becoming Javanese humility in offering to work with the defeated Megawati Soekarnoputri.

For the sake of the country, it is to be hoped she would respond to his call for reconciliation. The two had split after he left her Cabinet as coordinating security minister to seek the presidency. After his election victory was formalised on Monday, he did not make an immediate acceptance speech.

Partly, it is in the nature of the man not to gloat in triumphalism. Television images of him project an unforced likeability, a sincerity, that almost certainly was a factor in his election success. Partly, it is a cold calculation to secure what support he can from parliamentarians of Megawati's PDI-P and the wider coalition she had formed with Golkar. Together the coalition holds some 300 of the 550 seats in the House of Representatives.

It is unrealistic to expect that what is now the opposition bloc in the House can be easily swayed. Golkar chairman Akbar Tandjung has said that it is the opposition's mission to make the going hard for the new president.

There is scope for some form of cooperation, and the possibility should be explored. 'Whoever is chosen in a democratic election has to be accepted because that is a victory for all of us,' she said at a military observance this week. The remark bore a hint of noblesse oblige which Susilo's aides would want to pursue.

Megawati will soon leave office with a record of achievement that should assuage to an extent her hurt at having been rejected by the voters.

No one in Susilo's economics team can be under any illusions that the recovery job will be smooth, but he can be thankful for the spadework Ms Megawati has done.

-- The Straits Times, Singapore