SBY PRESIDENCY.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono today faces a historic opportunity of creating a legacy for himself, following his recent re-election for a second five-year term in office beginning October 20.His state of the nation address on Aug. 14 sets out a grand vision that takes Indonesia further than the one envisaged by our founding fathers. He added self-reliance, globally competitiveness and civilization to Soekarno-Hatta’s vision of an Indonesia that is just and prosperous.
Yudhoyono and running mate Boediono will need to assemble the best team to put this vision of Indonesia into reality. They have literally around 240 million people to choose from to create this Dream Team, and less than two months to go through the selection.
SBY has the political capital that would be the envy of any democratically elected leader anywhere: 60 percent of the votes in the July 8 election. His Democratic Party controls more than 25 percent of the seats in the House of Representatives and has forged a coalition that brings their combined strength close to 60 percent of the seats.
Yet, somehow we get the impression that SBY is about to make the same mistake that he did in 2004 when he included a number of problematic figures in his first-term Cabinet and gave away seats more than he should have to his coalition partners. He virtually squandered the huge political capital he had then within less than a year and many members of his Cabinet became a political liability.
In a speech last week accepting his election victory, SBY indicated that he will again include politicians from the coalition partners as rewards for their role in getting his re-election, as well as professionals, in his next Cabinet. His party is even open to the idea of one of the other two nationalist parties, either the Democratic Party of Struggle or Golkar, joining the camp that would allow the coalition to control over 70 percent of the House seats.
One could almost predict that his next team would be named The United Indonesia Cabinet II as a sequel to the first. But his fixation with unity could come at the expense of the effectiveness of the government in doing its duties and in pursuing the SBY vision.
If 2004-2009 yielded any lessons, it is that national unity could not be assured by forging the biggest coalition in government or in parliament. On many occasions in the last five years, the staunchest opposition to SBY’s policies came from his coalition partners in parliament while their representatives in the Cabinet became Trojan Horses.
Lessons from more mature democracies show that unity is assured by having a credible government and healthy relations with the oppositions in parliament. Indonesia’s political system is already built to accommodate divergent views and these differences should be settled through democratic means, including periodic elections.
A much bigger threat to Indonesia today is in having a democratically elected but ineffective government that cannot deliver on its promises. This is the story of the United Indonesia Cabinet and could be the story of the next government, unless SBY plays his cards right this time around.
Instead of going for a united government, he should go for a strong and effective cabinet. He should pick people because he truly trusts them first and foremost, and who have the expertise and the capacity to contribute to his endeavor. If trust is the most important criteria, then he can almost eliminate politicians from his coalition partners, who contributed little to his re-election campaign anyway.
The next five years will be a defining time for SBY to leave behind his legacy. How will the nation, who twice gave him the opportunities, remember him? He could be the leader that translates his dream into reality, but he could just end up like one of those big-talk phony leaders who let the nation down.
The answer lies to a large extent on how SBY picks his next Cabinet.The Jakarta Post
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