John McBeth, Jakarta – The day before Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid announced his new "All-the-President's-Men" cabinet, Golkar party Chairman and House of Representatives Speaker Akbar Tanjung decided there was nothing to keep him in Jakarta and boarded a plane for the United States to attend to personal and business matters. After all, in the several meetings he had had with Wahid in the preceding days, the president had not once mentioned a cabinet reshuffle, let alone asked for Tanjung's input on ministerial appointments.
It was that way as well with Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri, leader of the Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle, or PDI-P, which shares the balance of power with Golkar in the 500-seat House of Representatives.
As it turned out, Wahid gave no posts to Golkar. In doing so, he pushed former President Suharto's once all-powerful political vehicle into a uniquely new role in Indonesian politics as the core of a genuine parliamentary opposition.
"What he's effectively done is create a minority government and formalize an opposition," says one political analyst, reflecting the early astonishment over the 26-man line-up.
The new cabinet also shifts a heavy load onto two crucial coordinating ministers, in a move new economic czar Rizal Ramli says will make the cabinet more capable of getting things done. "A lot of them may not be sophisticated, but they are problem-solvers, they are men of action," Ramli said in an interview with the Review. "I think this is a good combination." Ramli says Tanjung phoned him from the US to say his support for the new cabinet would depend on whether it provided "good quality" programmes. But Theo Sambuaga, chairman of Golkar's central executive board, made it clear his party was now in opposition. "We never asked to be considered and now it is more convenient for Golkar to function as the opposition," Sambuaga told the Review, revealing plans to form a shadow cabinet.
For Gus Dur, as the president is known, it was an opportunity to shake himself loose from the unwieldy rainbow coalition foisted on him last October. Appointing loyalists who will do his bidding may well enable him to get the country back on track.
But in insisting on his presidential prerogative, he has left analysts to ponder whether he is refusing to accept the post-Suharto realities of a diminished presidency or has become the definer of a new political landscape of which a credible opposition is an integral part.
Either way, with Wahid's National Awakening Party holding just 51 seats in the House of Representatives, the reshuffle is a bold ploy that has set the scene for another, potentially more dangerous confrontation with parliament – particularly if the new cabinet fails to deliver.
"There will be no honeymoon period," says Sambuaga, a former manpower minister. "He has to show it will work." The president delivered on his promise to the recent People's Consultative Assembly to give Megawati a bigger role in the day-to-day running of government affairs. But his failure to consult her on the make-up of the cabinet itself so infuriated the vice-president that she refused to attend the initial announcement of the new cabinet on August 23. After directing palace officials to remove her chair from next to the president's, she walked stone-faced to her car.
High-ranking PDI-P members acknowledge that the tensions between Wahid and Megawati are very real. But true to form, Megawati refused to consider turning down her new duties, leaving supporters with little option but to stay the course – at least for the time being.
Parliament may not be so forgiving. Legislators, including those from Megawati's party, are going ahead with investigations into the president's alleged involvement in two cases of financial improprieties, both of which could lead to impeachment proceedings.
The success of Wahid's revamped cabinet will clearly rest heavily on the new working arrangement between the president, vice-president and the two new coordinating ministers – Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, 50, a former three-star general who takes charge of politics and security, and Ramli, 47, another Wahid confidante who has been saddled with the tough job of restoring confidence in the government and its policies, and rescuing Indonesia's struggling economy.
How will it all work? Ramli says his economic ministers will send reports to him each Friday, allowing his staff time to choose the items that need consideration. On Sundays, he and Yudhoyono will meet with Megawati, break for a separate session between themselves and then rejoin the vice-president for a working lunch. Megawati will then report directly to Wahid.
Also under this arrangement, Ramli says, the cabinet will meet weekly. The new arrangement appears to put decision-making into the hands of a smaller, more closely coordinated circle of people.
Despite signs of Megawati's new assertiveness, former economic coordinating minister Kwik Kian Gie says the vice-president will make no important decisions. "It is all decided by Gus Dur," he says.
Sambuaga is more blunt. "She's not a person with guts," he says, bemoaning her failure to put more pressure on the president. "She's too soft – she can't say No." Most criticism of the new cabinet was directed at the choice of Finance Minister Prijadi Praptosuhardjo, a former Bank Rakyat Indonesia director who recently failed a central bank "Fit and Proper" assessment to head BRI. According to a banker familiar with the affair, a furious Wahid told central bank Governor Sjahril Sabirin after the assessment, "I don't know how, but I want him to pass." Sabirin refused to budge.
Wahid's relationship with Prijadi goes back to the early 1980s when Prijadi was a BRI branch manager in East Java. The president calls him the architect of the rural microcredit programme – whose beneficiaries, among others, included members of Wahid's mass Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama. Despite the outcry over the appointment, some who worked with the new minister on the National Business Council were impressed by his conceptual approach to problems.
Some critics also have questioned Ramli's appointment, particularly his record as an economic nationalist and how it will square with the recovery plan laid out by the International Monetary Fund. The US-trained economist prefers to be called a pragmatist, but says he wants the IMF to concentrate on macroeconomics and monitoring – and leave most sectoral issues, such as rice and forestry policy, petroleum subsidies, privatizations and small and medium-size business issues to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, which he believes have a longer-term perspective than the IMF.
The new chief economics minister says the name of the game is leadership. "We shouldn't be looking in the side-mirrors when we're driving. We should be looking straight ahead."