Kalla, for president? No thanks

John McBeth, The Straits Times, Asia News Network/Singapore

Just for a moment there, it seemed like almost the unthinkable had happened. In a translated interview with the state-run Antara news agency, Indonesian Vice-President and Golkar party chairman Jusuf Kalla announced that he would run for the Indonesian presidency in 2009.

Even by his mercurial standards, it seemed a strange time to make such an announcement as President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had four more years of his term left.

It took some hours, but it finally emerged that Indonesian reporters working for Agence France-Presse had misinterpreted what Jusuf had said. In a measure of the often imprecise nature of the Indonesian language and the Vice-President's own jerky manner of speaking, he had not been discussing the presidency but his successful bid last December for leadership of Golkar.

But imagine, just for a moment, how that would have changed the political dynamics and provided more fuel for the already rampant, but still entirely unsubstantiated, reports of a rivalry between the two leaders?

And who would President Susilo have turned to for his new running mate if he were to seek a second term?

The use of the word "rivalry" implies that Jusuf does have his eyes on the presidency in 2009. But does he really?

Javanese politicians almost chuckle over the prospect. Although the 63-year-old South Sulawesi-born businessman has a far stronger political base than President Susilo, that counts for little in any direct presidential election where Java accounts for 60 per cent of eligible voters.

Political analysts say that for all the progress Indonesia has made towards democratization, a non-Javanese has no real hope of capturing the nation's highest office -- not yet, anyway. And Jusuf knows that better than anyone.

"In the United States, it took 200 years for a Southerner to become president," he pointed out in an interview in the Oct. 24 issue of Tempo newsweekly. "So it's not easy for a Bugis (Sulawesi native) like me to become president. There was Habibie, but that was an accident."

In fact, former vice-president B.J. Habibie, born in Pare Pare on Sulawesi's west coast, only became president when the long- serving Soeharto resigned in 1998.

Seventeen months later, Habibie failed to win even the Golkar nomination. Most pundits put that down to his previous close ties with Soeharto (who incidentally still adamantly refuses to see him). But Sulawesi party faithful preferred to pin the blame on party chairman Akbar Tandjung, a North Sumatran with strong Javanese ties, for undermining his chances.

And now Akbar is effectively out in the cold too. But Jusuf only ousted him from the party chairmanship last December because Susilo prevailed on his Vice-President to help in shoring up his support in Parliament. Akbar had wanted to take Golkar into the opposition camp with former presidents Megawati Soekarnoputri and Abdurrahman Wahid.

For the rank-and-file in Golkar, a party which has always ruled, that was not an option -- even if it did mean choosing a leader from among the minorities.

There was even a Sulawesi connection that brought Jusuf and Susilo together in the first place. According to most accounts, that introductory role was played by Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar, whose wife Erna -- a former human settlements minister and current UN special envoy for Millennium Development Goals in Asia and the Pacific -- is a member of Sulawesi's prestigious Walinono family.

Witoelar, a regular Jusuf golf partner and former Golkar secretary-general, was one of Susilo's senior political advisers during last year's presidential campaign.

So what of this high-level rivalry? As far back as January, Indonesian newspapers were reporting that the rift had reached a "critical stage" -- whatever that meant. But in February, Jusuf was telling interviewers that the talk was all nonsense.

Now, as the administration marks its first year in office, Jusuf is tired of having to answer the same question from journalists who cannot seem to understand that differences of opinion between two very different people are, well, perfectly normal.

Some ministers who have watched the two in action believe those differences may even be healthy -- Susilo, with his penchant for thinking things through and trying to come up with the perfect solution; Jusuf, with the instincts of a trader who willingly acknowledges he sometimes gets ahead of himself and the President.

"If we had the same characteristics, this country would be in danger," he told Tempo. "If both of us were quick to act, we would be issuing hundreds of licensees. So, the combination between us is good."

Last month, Susilo seemed to tire of the speculation as well. This time, it centered on his controversial decision to hold video conferences with his ministers while he was on a visit to the US.

To many commentators, that was because he feared Jusuf would act unilaterally over the politically sensitive oil price issue.

"It's wrong to say I don't have confidence in my Vice- President," he told reporters, noting that as far as he was concerned, the relationship was "very harmonious".

Most of the more recent rumors did stem, in fact, from the agonizing that went on in the government over how much to reduce oil subsidies by. It is well known that the President took a long time trying to calculate the political fallout from raising the price of benchmark premium petrol by 50 per cent, or taking the advice of Jusuf and Economic Coordinating Minister Aburizal Bakrie and going for an 80-90 per cent increase.

In the end, he opted for the high end, but only after putting in place a Rp 4.6 trillion (S$775 million) program to give Rp 100,000 a month to 15.6 million of the country's poorest families for the rest of the year. That idea, according to well-placed Cabinet sources, came from the high-energy Vice-President himself, even if he is not claiming credit for it.

From the beginning, Jusuf was always going to have a much more constructive role in government than most of his predecessors.

The way he explains it, his role was to be a "chief of staff", with Susilo focusing on strategy and the vision thing, and the Vice-President taking care of technical matters. The two leaders still talk on the phone every day, just as they have from day one of the administration.

But Jusuf understands that this is not about sharing power in a system where the real authority is vested in only one person -- a directly elected president.

"I have always stressed that to build this country, we need to work together," he had told Tempo. "The President is supreme, his word is final. If he makes a wrong statement, no one can correct him. If I make a wrong statement, the President can correct me. But every statement that I make has been previously discussed with him."

Jusuf even has a ready answer for why it was decided not to move his office across Central Jakarta's Merdeka Square to the Presidential Palace -- a change in plans seen as further evidence of the rocky relationship at the top. As it turned out, the building he was to move into, previously the office of Soeharto's Supreme Advisory Council, was deemed to be too close to the street.

"A bomb," he said, "would blow it sky high. We would have had to erect a fence as solid as the one around the Australian Embassy."

Like many of his fellow Bugis -- seafarers who have migrated across Indonesia more than any other ethnic group -- Jusuf apparently finds fences far too confining.