Paradigmatic shift needed in whole concept of governing

There are widespread expectations that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is on the verge of reshuffling his Cabinet. To get a more in-depth view about the challenges facing the Cabinet, The Jakarta Post's Kornelius Purba talked to H.S. Dillon, the executive director of the Partnership for Governance Reform. Receiving a PhD from Cornell University in 1983, Dillon has served in various positions in the governmental sphere. The following are excerpts from the interview.

Question: Now people are talking about a Cabinet reshuffle. How do you think that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono should reshuffle his Cabinet?

Answer: What I am calling for is a paradigmatic change in the whole concept of governing. Right now, the current Cabinet was formed on the previous position that this is a sharing of power. So, you are getting power, power over your people, and you want to exercise the power for your benefit. What you need right now to make change meaningful is that the whole paradigm would be, that this Cabinet is there to deliver to assist the President in delivering the promises he made to the voters.

So, the members of the Cabinet are not only competent in their fields, but those who can work together as a team, complement each other. And the goal should be very clear toward the end of the President's term. And then he should call up the people he knows. The overriding criteria, the candidates should have a track record of serving the people, and not serving narrow sectarian interests.

The President is still popular despite all the criticism against him. How can this happen?

The reason is that the people still see him as a decent person, as a person they can trust. But it is not just about political will, he has to prove the political will. That is why his Cabinet should be those dedicated to implementing his vision and accomplishing his goal of bringing this country to where he wants it in 2009. I don't think the Cabinet should be 35 people, maybe 20, 25 at the most.

What is your point?

Most of this is connected with the fact that the bureaucracy has been growing oversized. And the bureaucracy is no longer, to a large extent, serving the public. In the regencies, you know, there are more than 400 regencies, but only about 20 regencies have used their powers to serve their people. Bureaucracy is powerful because that is the nature of government, but increasingly when you have globalization, bureaucracy is no longer going to remain power. There is to be a great paradigm shift from governing to governance.

As the President is much more independent now in choosing his ministers, in your view how should he change his Cabinet?

The President has been in government for a long time. He can talk to the people, not the politicians. He can talk to businesspeople. We have many good politicians, not all of them are crooks. He then should talk to the regional leaders, asking their opinions, but the choice must be his. So it is not just his prerogative but his responsibility because the people elected him.

Remember, the major political parties tried to block him in the past presidential election, including Golkar. Golkar cannot work in the opposition camp. If Susilo had not made Jusuf Kalla Vice President, he could never have become the chair of Golkar. He (Kalla) could not even defeat Gen. (ret) Wiranto in the Golkar convention to run for the presidency.

People are talking about the position of the coordinating minister for the economy. But unlike the Soeharto era, now the position of a coordinating minister is much weaker, right?

Soeharto was only working with his coordinating ministers, and he also had his full Cabinet meeting once a month. Every week, there was a coordinating minister's meeting, where we provided the material and we discussed that. There was an attempt to forge a consensus.

And it was the coordinating minister who reported that this is the policy for a week. Soeharto only had to deal directly with coordinating ministers. Of course, he also dealt with other ministers as the need arose.

Do you think such practices are still applicable now?

It could be, because we must have a government with the capacity to deliver. If you are fragmented, you cannot deliver. There should be coherence in our policy.

To be more concrete, what is your opinion about the next Cabinet?

The next Cabinet should draw the lesson from this last year's experience. You see, people don't trust his Cabinet but people still trust him. That means he still has political capital, not the political parties because they don't trust political parties anymore. So he should form his own Cabinet. And his Cabinet, as said, should not be more than 25 people. There are too many ministries that do not have any policy instruments within their control.

Why should we have minister of public housing, why should we have minister of sports? You should merge these, because the government in the future should be less and less involved in day- to-day management. Government should be no longer rowing that much. This does not mean, however, that the government abdicates its responsibilities.

Now, what is more important for the Cabinet that they can work together as a team. So there should be the trust, not just between the President and his Cabinet members but among the members themselves. They should see their fellow ministers as members of the same team. What the President needs to do is not just change the Cabinet but the whole way in which he governs. He has to change himself, too. He must make clear his goals.

Now we have many good ministers, but they are not effective. So, what the President should use are people who have been tested, people who have run the government organization, people who have demonstrated their leadership, being able to construct and to implement breakthroughs.

I hope you don't take this as an insulting question. You have said so many things. But if you were given a chance, would you practice what you preach?

I have worked in the government. I rose to top government positions without becoming a Cabinet member. I was made the head of the antipoverty agency. I have worked in the agriculture ministry, in human rights, and in anticorruption.