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.