On top of Wiranto's platform: More jobs, revenue
Zakki P. Hakim, Jakarta
Retired general Wiranto promises to establish macroeconomic stability, in addition to creating more jobs, boosting the nation's revenue and more fairly distributing that revenue if he were elected.
Other priorities for an administration led by him would be to create economic justice and boost the nation's competitiveness by mastering science and technology, according to his economic platform.
Unlike the economic agenda laid out recently by incumbent President Megawati Soekarnoputri, which is full of figures of economic targets, such as gross domestic product (GDP) and employment, the platform prepared by Wiranto's team made available to the Jakarta Post does not contain any figures and only focuses on steps to reach five main goals.
Wiranto is the candidate of the Golkar party, which garnered 24.5 million votes, or 21.6 percent, of the total in April's legislative election -- the top vote-getters among the 24 parties. He is paired up with Muslim cleric/human rights activist Solahuddin "Gus Solah" Wahid whose base of support includes the 40-million strong organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), mostly based in East Java.
In order to reach his goals, Wiranto will enact "structural economic transformation", the term used in his economic platform.
This, he states, will be achieved by boosting job opportunities, reforming the labor market and increasing productivity, as well as reforming the real sector (agriculture, manufacture, trade, services and others), optimizing the management of natural resources and empowering the "people's economy".
He promises to also seek to create certainties for businesses by strengthening the market economy and enforcing all the existing economic laws.
The economic platform was formulated by politicians and academics, including former rector of Bogor's Agricultural University (IPB) Prof. Soleh Solehudin, who was also former Minister of Agriculture in Habibie administration; Sutrisno Iwantono and Said Didu, both from the Association of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI) and Airlangga Hartarto, an entrepreneur and an executive at Kosgoro, a Golkar-affiliated youth group.
Aside from the five goals mentioned above, the economic platform also spells out a 24-point development program over a 5- year period.
On top of the 24 programs is the control of prices for primary goods in order to ensure that people can afford the basic necessities, combined with the efforts to improve their welfare.
The second program is to maintain monetary stability. In this respect, Wiranto and Gus Solah will strengthen the coordination between the government and the central bank to keep a strong and stable rupiah, low inflation and low interest rates.
Wiranto's economic team seems to have paid special attention to agriculture, as the platform gives a relatively detailed elaboration on plans for that sector.
With regard to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), they will form a special institution accountable to the president to coordinate the SMEs. This agency is similar to the Japan Small Business Corporation (Jasmec) or the Small Business Administration in the U.S., the Industrial Development Center in Nigeria, and Small and Medium Industry Promotion (SMPIC) in South Korea.