Two Cheers for the Thinking General

In the past five years, however, reform has been largely limited to the Finance Ministry, which is lucky enough to enjoy an unusually strong minister, Sri Mulyani. Winters of Northwestern compares her tenacity to "a mole cleaning up her hole," though he notes that other ministers have not followed her lead. SBY deserves credit for putting Mulyani in place—among other things, she's refused to bail out well-connected companies that have come begging to the government—as well as other reformers in a few key sectors: the trade ministry, the police, tax and customs, and the prison administration. But he hasn't shown much initiative himself, and has balked at taking on certain holdovers from the old regime. For example, his minister for social affairs, Aburizal Bakrie, is a key figure in the Golkar Party—once Suharto's political organization—who used his connections to become, until recently, the richest man in the country.

In his first term, much of SBY's caution may have been justified by his lack of a powerful apparatus. When he took office five years ago, his Demokrat Party held only 10 percent of the seats in the National Assembly, forcing him to forge an alliance with nine other political parties, including Golkar. This coalition tied his hands in some key respects. For example, in Suharto's day all civil servants were forced to join Golkar, and these ongoing ties have led the party to block most major shake-ups of the bureaucracy. But in this April's legislative elections, the Demokrats upped their share in Parliament to 26 percent, making it the strongest party. This means SBY will have far more room to maneuver when the new Parliament convenes in September.

The big question is whether he'll use it. "I'm worried that we might not become the country that we could. It's a pity, because now is our chance," says Jusuf Wanandi, head of the Jakarta-based think tank CSIS. An early test will come when the president names his new cabinet; observers are watching to see whether he picks bold reformers or gives away posts to older members of establishment parties. Yudhoyono's recent nomination of Mulyani as a candidate for governor of the Bank of Indonesia has worried the business community that he's not interested in preserving the best talent for ministerial jobs; the country has other economists capable of running the bank, but few reformers as bold and politically savvy to run a major ministry. Then again, SBY's choice, which he announced in May, to replace his vice president, Kalla, with Boediono—an apolitical economist—went against the advice of his entourage (who favored a more conventional pick) and may be a sign that the president is steeling himself for a decisive break from the past. In previous campaigns, secular presidential candidates from Java like SBY always picked non-Javanese running mates with strong Muslim credentials and ties to the machine. Boediono has none of these.

Some analysts argue that the kinds of dramatic change still necessary may have to wait until the next presidential election, by which time most of the Suharto-era figures will be too old and will have used up too much of their political capital to run again. The recent vote was "their last chance to satisfy their political libido," says 42-year-old Effendi Ghazali of the University of Indonesia. In the long term, things look promising. Thanks to impressive efforts to decentralize power supported by SBY, a good number of young, capable, and highly popular local leaders have begun to emerge. And voters seems hungry for real change: in April's parliamentary election, 60 percent of the candidate chosen were first-timers.

In sum, despite all its progress, Indonesia needs another big push if it is to capitalize on the changes begun since its transition to democracy. Unlike other regional success stories, Indonesia lacks a natural spur to goad it forward: it faces no outside threat, as did South Korea or Taiwan, and as a new nation it has no glorious past to live up to, as do China and India. What Indonesia does have is vast natural resources; a large, cheap workforce; a strategic location; and an open, stable political system. Such potential should be motivation enough. "We need to dream again," says Anies Baswedan, rector of Paramadina University. Whether the Thinking General can inspire those dreams remains to be seen.

© 2009