Mega told to retain ultimate authority

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Political analysts have urged President Megawati Soekarnoputri, who delegates too much of her power to her chief ministers, to retain ultimate authority over all governmental matters.

Kusnanto Anggoro of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said on Thursday that the President's willingness to delegate some of her authority to others may be an acknowledgement on her part of a lack of the requisite managerial skills.

"Such a system is okay as long as the President is still in full command. She should also make all government decisions because ultimately she should account for all that she has done before the People's Consultative Assembly," Kusnanto told The Jakarta Post.

The problem was that the President would be faced with various difficulties if her aides abused their authority for their own political gain or if her aides were more dominant than the President herself.

Megawati could prevent such problems by insisting that all decisions had to be made in Cabinet meetings, not in coordination meetings led by the coordinating ministers.

Indria Samego of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) shares Kusnanto's views, saying that Megawati needed to use effective leadership skills to monitor her aides, especially those who have various political interests.

"If necessary she can reprimand those aides who she thinks have failed to abide by her policies," Indria told the Post.

He said that such warnings were necessary for ministers who had made excessive use of their positions to pursue their own political interests.

Indria said it would not be unusual to see her aides pursue their own particular political agendas in the lead up to the 2004 general election.

Ryaas Rasyid, former regional autonomy minister, said that the most important thing was for Megawati to give her aides clear-cut guidelines setting out those political activities that were acceptable and those that were not.

Megawati and her aides should abide by the regulations chosen by the President, Ryaas said, adding that she had to issue a reprimand as soon as she found that any of her aides had deviated from the guidelines.

"What I know about Megawati is that she fully entrusts everything to her staff. Therefore, both the good and the bad aspects of her government very much depend on them," he said.

Supporting Indria's opinion, Ryaas said it was not wrong for Megawati's aides to have their own political agenda, but added that all activities conducted by her aides in connection with government affairs should be under her control.

"Megawati cannot ban her aides from being involved in politics because she herself is still the chairperson of a political party. But she has the right to control the activities of her aides," said Ryaas, who is also an expert on constitutional law.

Samego said the impression that Megawati could not control her aides was caused by an inability to articulate government policy by herself.

He said that when she assumed her vice presidency her secretary Bambang Kesowo took the leading role in articulating Megawati's policies.

"We hoped that she would change after she became the number one person in the country. But it seems this has not been easy, so that coordinating ministers seem more dominant than Megawati," he added.

Meanwhile, Pratikno, a lecturer at the school of social and political sciences at the Yogyakarta-based Gadjah Mada University said that, since the beginning, Megawati had established a system that delegated some of her power to her aides.

"It is actually good for institutional development. Not all problems should be handled by the President herself," Pratikno said on Wednesday.

Pratikno said that problems arose if the system was not consistently implemented and a particular trusted person used his position for his own political interests. But such weaknesses of the system could be minimized by creating an effective control mechanism, he added.