Anita Rachman – As talk of a cabinet reshuffle heats up, lawmakers on Monday offered an idea of how President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono could target his changes: cut those mired in corruption controversies.

"What does the president actually look at? A minster's working performance? If their performance and their image is poor, what's good of having them in the cabinet?" asked Nasir Djamil, a lawmaker from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS).

The Ministry of Youth and Sports Affairs – headed by minister Andi Malarangeng – has been under the spotlight for months due to graft scandals linked to the Southeast Asian Games' Athletes' Village.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration – led by Muhaiman Iskandar – has been connected to alleged bribes under a special ministry program, the Acceleration of Infrastructure Development in Transmigration Areas (PPID).

These two cases were also mentioned by the Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI) as one of the reasons behind the cabinet's poor public approval rating, which stands at just 38 percent.

Also hitting public approval is the perceived lack of progress in advancing issues of public interest, such as fair treatment and protection of Ahmadiyah members by the Ministry of Religious Affairs, curtailment of sentence remission for corruption convicts by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, and ensuring the safety of LPG gas canisters by the Ministry of Energy.

PKS deputy secretary general Mahfudz Siddiq said he hoped the president would evaluate his cabinet fairly. He said the cases gaining major media coverage were obvious, "but don't fire them [ministers] just because they have attracted negative exposure in the media. Look at whether they are really involved in graft," he said.

Mahfudz said there had been no talks held between PKS and the president, but that he was sure PKS's Minister of Communication and Information Technology, Tifatul Sembiring, was doing a good job and did not deserve to lose his position.

That call for a ministerial clean-out was echoed by deputy House Speaker Pramono Anung from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). He said public approval had dropped significantly because of the cases around the president's teammates, both in the cabinet and his party.

According to Pramono, the best time to evaluate the cabinet is now. Pramono said only Yudhoyono would know how many ministers need re-evaluating. "But it's more than two ministers that are going to be reshuffled," he said.

Pramono said he hoped the president did not re-evaluate the cabinet according to the requests of certain political parties.

The United Development Party (PPP) secretary general M. Romahurmuziy said there were no ministers who were safe from a cabinet reshuffle, since none had a perfect record. "But that's the president's prerogative," he said.

Jafar Hafsah, chairman of Yudhoyono's Democratic Party said the president never consulted with the party on reshuffles.