Slow and steady SBY gains ground

Slow and steady SBY gains ground

John McBeth, The Straits Times, Asia News Network/Singapore

It is unspoken, of course, but there are many impatient
Indonesians who wish President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono would
dispense with the velvet glove and start using the mailed fist.

Seven months into his presidency, most people give him an A-
plus for style, for his obvious sincerity and for doing the right
things. But even at this early stage, there are those who see too
many promises and not enough real action. In short, the "I" word
-- indecision -- that has haunted him for years.

It is all quite unfair, of course. According to his aides,
Susilo believes in doing everything by the book. That means
having to work within the system -- as flawed as it is -- while
trying to clean up corruption and introduce incremental reforms.
Previous reform-era presidents did little except tinker at the
edges. This one is trying to do the toughest thing of all: change
the national mindset that has endured since then president
Soeharto's downfall seven years ago.

In fact, Susilo may just be the leader Indonesia has been
yearning for, a leader who is not an accepted member of the
traditional Jakarta elite, yet has instincts that often seem at
odds with his nearly three decades in the military. His efforts
at finding a peaceful settlement in Aceh, for example, have not
always been appreciated by conservative generals. Nor was his
decision to bring in foreign forces to help in last December's
tsunami relief operation, even though it was the obvious thing to
do and helped define the early days of his presidency.

There have been some missteps. His decision to set overly
ambitious targets for his first 100 days was doomed from the
beginning. The invitation for people to SMS complaints to his
hand-phone predictably crashed the system.

Politically, he has been handicapped by having to choose a
Cabinet last October that reflected the uncertainties at the
time. No-one really believed Golkar would follow former leader
Akbar Tandjung into Megawati Soekarnoputri's sourpuss opposition,
but in the end it did take Vice-President Jusuf Kalla's personal
intervention at the December convention to bring the party on
board. As things have predictably turned out, getting an
entrenched bureaucracy to respond to the political process and
implement directives has been a lot more problematic than dealing
with Parliament.

It seems almost certain that the President will reshuffle his
Cabinet in November, once he has completed a promised evaluation
of his ministers. Political calculations remain difficult to
determine, but there are already indications that he will replace
ineffective Finance Minister Jusuf Anwar with feisty National
Planning Minister Sri Mulyani Idrawati. She was his first choice
last year anyway, but he ran into strong resistance from
nationalist-Islamic politicians concerned about her previous job
at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Another key figure to go may be State Secretary Yusril Ihza
Mahendra, a former leader of the minority Muslim-orientated
Crescent Star Party, whose well-known taste for intrigue and
obstructionism has never engendered real trust among his fellow
ministers. Well-placed government sources say that, as a result,
many of the traditional duties of the man who heads the
presidential office have been taken off him and split between the
President's Cabinet Secretary, Sudi Silalahi, and Justice
Minister Hamid Awaluddin.

Perhaps the biggest concern about the Susilo presidency is the
absence of an inner circle of advisers who can help him set an
agenda. He may know in his own mind where he wants to go, and
there is no question that he does listen to advice, but as one
senior government official told The Straits Times: "It's the
problem of a smart guy who knows he is smart and runs the country
on his own initiative."

More than that, Susilo survived four presidencies with his
reputation intact, largely by keeping his distance from anyone
who may ask for or dispense favors. "He's sent a message that
says 'Keep your distance', so people are not keen to stick their
necks out for him," observes Sarwono Kusumaatmadja, a ministerial
veteran of the Soeharto and Abdurrahman Wahid administrations.

"So when ministers are confronted by the press, they always
pass the buck upstairs."

Indonesian analysts, perplexed over the phenomenon of a vice-
president who for the first time has a real role in government,
continue to fret about the so-called rivalry between Susilo and
Kalla. What they cannot seem to understand is that these are two
very different men who do a lot of things differently. Susilo
likes to think over things, which is one of the reasons why he is
considered indecisive. Kalla is a gunfighter who has a tendency
to over-reach and shoot from the hip.

That does not make them rivals. They might even complement
each other. After all, they do talk five or six times a day.
Ministers who work with both dismiss talk of rivalry and one
senior presidential aide even insists they are getting "closer
and closer". Take the occasion recently when Kalla was accused of
making the Aceh talks a one-man crusade. With the whole
initiative still hanging in the balance, Susilo could have let
him hanging out there like a ripe durian. Instead, he came to the
rescue and repeated his backing for the peace move.

Little by little, Susilo is consolidating. His recent
promotion of hard-charging Gen. Sutanto as police chief could
make a huge difference, in everything from fighting terrorism to
solving the bizarre murder of human-rights activist Munir Said
Thalib -- still one of the biggest challenges to the President's
resolve. He has also handled the military adroitly, promoting
another trusted figure, Gen. Djoko Santoso, as army chief of
staff and sidelining Gen. Ryamizard Ryacudu, a hardline Megawati
loyalist whom his bitter predecessor had left behind like a live
hand grenade.

In early May, apparently concerned over a lack of
coordination in the fight against corruption, he effectively took
over prosecutorial powers himself by appointing a 51-strong
presidential task force -- comprising prosecutors, police and
auditors -- to investigate high-profile cases.

Critics point to the fact that only Aceh provincial governor
Abdullah Puteh has so far gone to jail for corruption. Yet at no
time in Indonesia's history have so many people been investigated
or declared suspects for stealing public funds. There is only one
lingering problem. It could take at least another generation
before the country's flawed legal system can be counted on to
return judgments rooted in transparent argument and free of the
implications of bribery.

It is a burden the President will have to bear, but there is
no doubt he is serious. At a six-hour Cabinet meeting on July 8,
he surprised his ministers by launching into a long-winded
discourse on the principles of his government, pointedly
reminding them of the "no corruption" contracts they had signed
when they were sworn in.

"We were looking around wondering who he was talking to," says
one minister.

Come November, if he feels sufficiently secure in the job,
they might finally know.