Paradigmatic shift needed in whole concept of governing

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.