President yet to approve Cabinet Secretary's plan

President yet to approve Cabinet Secretary's plan

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

State Secretary/Cabinet Secretary Bambang Kesowo seems to be out
of favor as the second draft of his proposed office
reorganization plan lies unnoticed on the President's desk.

Bambang submitted the first reorganization draft late last
year and decided to submit another one last month but up until
last Saturday when President Megawati Soekarnoputri left for an
overseas trip neither of them had been signed.

The first draft stipulates that the state secretary is the
coordinator of the presidential office while the second one
reduces the state secretary's role merely to administrative
tasks.

There is no separation between state and cabinet secretary in
either draft and both posts will remain in Bambang's hands,
according to secretary to the Vice President Prijono
Tjiptoherijanto.

The President has given no explanation as to why she has not
approved it, he said.

"But there must be an important reason why the President has
not signed it after a ten-month time lapse and now the second
one," he said.

The position of state secretary is much sought after, with
bureaucrats and party members often fighting one another for it.

It is an open secret that Megawati's Indonesian Democratic
Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) has explicitly asked the
President to reduce Bambang's influence in the Cabinet.

The party members once openly asked the President to dismiss
Bambang as Cabinet secretary although he is a prominent
bureaucrat and well-versed in state regulations.

Observers suspect that Megawati's reluctance to sign the draft
reflects her inability to solve the dispute between her party and
Bambang.