SBY's first-year report: It's 7 out of 10

SBY's first-year report: It's 7 out of 10

Endy M. Bayuni, Jakarta

How did President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono do in his first
year in office? Since we are now in the habit of giving marks for
our leaders, at the risk of being jeered, I am giving him a score
of 7 out of 10. If six is a passing grade, SBY did more than just
passing this year.

Too kind, one might say, considering that most other people
are giving him lower or even failing grades. I have my reasons
for being kind, or even generous, to him.

Here is a president who went through a lot in his first year,
probably much more than he had bargained for, and certainly a lot
more than earlier Indonesian presidents have had to deal with.
Here is a president, who, in spite of his landslide 62 percent
victory at the polls, knows the limits of his office in the new
political landscape where power is shared out. Here is a
president who shows that he is maturing on the job.

When SBY read the oath of his office 12 months ago, Indonesian
politics entered into uncharted territory.

Indonesia's first directly elected president found his powers
clipped by the newly amended 1945 Constitution. Now, he has to
share power with the House of Representatives, and with a new
player in town, the Regional Representatives Council modeled on
the U.S. Senate.

Elected members of these two institutions owe their
allegiances to the electorate or their political parties, and not
so much to the President.

SBY's position became even more tenuous considering that his
party machinery, the Democrat Party, only won 7 percent of the
parliamentary votes in April 2004.

Enter Jusuf Kalla who got elected as vice president on the
same ticket. Kalla is no ordinary vice president as he came in
with a lot of his own political capital, including initially a
breakaway faction of Golkar, but later on, in December, the full
force of the party with the most seats in the House. SBY thus has
had to share power, for better or for worse, with a politically
powerful vice president.

The political power plays of 12 months ago is reflected in the
composition of the United Indonesia Cabinet.

The President then faced the prospect of having to fight his
legislative agenda with the powerful coalition of the two largest
factions in the House: Golkar which was then still controlled by
Akbar Tandjung, and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle
(PDIP) of Megawati Soekarnoputri, the losing incumbent in last
year's presidential election. He therefore forged a coalition of
his own, involving his PD and smaller Islamist parties, not so
much as to match the strength of the Nationhood Coalition as to
minimize the deficit of the number of votes in the House.

This was the political reality as SBY moved to the
presidential palace a year ago. Unlike Soeharto, whose word would
immediately become law, SBY knew that he faced a tough fight from
many powerful detractors, particularly the opposition factions in
the House, which are determined in giving him a run for his
money.

Every major decision he made had to go through the scrutiny of
the House and stand up to other political forces in the country.

SBY is the captain of the ship all right but, as one foreign
observer aptly noted, he faces a continuously mutinous crew.

Critics have called the President indecisive, and were
frustrated at his failure to capitalize on the 62 percent support
he won at the polls in September 2004. While there may be some of
that, it is the limitations of the powers of his office that
dictated him to be more cautious in making decisions. Anyone else
in his place would have done the same, doing the political maths
before making the important decisions.

To complicate matters even further, beginning this year Susilo
is losing his clout over the regions. With direct elections for
governors and regional chiefs, the elected leaders owe their
allegiances to the people first, the political parties that
sponsored their election second, and the President a distant
third, if at all. We have already seen an example of this lack of
loyalty from the regions when the new West Sumatra Governor
Gamawan Fauzi decided to throw his support behind the protests
against the government's hikes in fuel prices this month.

As if the political challenges facing SBY were not enough, his
first year was marked with many unforeseen events that were
beyond his control. These took a lot out of the President and his
team, at times at the expense of his own agenda, including the
fight against corruption, the promotion of governance, and the
push for higher economic growth to create more jobs, raise
people's income and eradicate poverty.

There was the big earthquake and the devastating tsunami in
Aceh in December as well as other smaller natural disasters.
There were the outbreaks of polio, thousands of malnourished
children, and lately bird flu. In meantime, world oil prices went
through the roof during the year and forced him to hike domestic
fuel prices twice. And at the start of this month, terrorists
struck again.

Overall, SBY did relatively well in dealing with these largely
unforeseen problems. He made little inroads into his agenda of
fighting corruption and promoting investment, but they did not
suffer terribly either.

About the only bright spot in his presidency was the peace
agreement that the government signed with the separatist Free
Aceh Movement (GAM) in August which officially ended a 30-year
bloody war.

For sure, there are still many areas of concern that have not
been fully addressed. The President's human rights record, for
example, is tarnished by his failure to solve the mystery
surrounding the murder of human rights campaigner Munir. His
approval for the Indonesian Military (TNI) to reactivate its
territorial role as part of his war on terror also goes against
the spirit eliminating the military's presence in politics.

A score of 7 nevertheless seems reasonable if we take the
presidency as a whole, rather than look at specific issues where
he failed. It is a reasonable when measured against the big and
unforeseen tragedies, and most of all, it is reasonable given the
political battles he constantly faced.

A score of 7 also looks reasonable considering the
alternative. One shudders to think how Megawati, or the other
three president wannabes for that matter, would have dealt with
these seemingly endless crises if they were in charge.

Looking ahead, if SBY survives this tumultuous first year in
his presidency, and if he had really matured with the job these
past 12 months, the coming years will likely be a little more
plain sailing.