Real statesmen would resign, wouldn't they?

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Wed, 10/10/2007 3:56 PM  |  Opinion

Endy M. Bayuni, Jakarta

A new favorite pastime of political pundits is to monitor the relationship between President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his deputy Jusuf Kalla. They may be the dynamic duo the nation elected on the same ticket in 2004, but it is now certain that the two will be rivals in the 2009 presidential election, and sooner or later their partnership will end.

Yudhoyono seems to think this partnership can go all the way until the end of their five-year mandate, which is in October 2009. The same goes with members of his coalition Cabinet who will be campaigning for political parties or candidates seeking to unseat Yudhoyono. He expects them to remain loyal all the way to the end.

In a statement last week, the President said he expected all members of his government to continue dedicating their services to the people even as they are campaigning for other political parties or candidates.

This sounds like a very naive expectation from a bunch of politicians.

Whatever the intention of these political leaders, the country is now already shifting gears into election mode.

Two former presidents, Megawati Soekarnoputri and Abdurrahman ""Gus Dur"" Wahid, have staked claims for the coveted number one job. Former Jakarta governor Sutiyoso says he will contest the election after securing the support of a handful of political parties. Gen. (ret.) Wiranto, the former military chief, has been busy building up his People's Conscience Party, which would be the main vehicle for his presidential bid.

Yudhoyono, in typical Javanese fashion, gave a non-committal response when asked if he would run for reelection (""it depends on the situation in 2009,"" he said). But one can be sure he will seek a second term.

Kalla will be forced to run for the number one slot whether he wants to or not. As chairman of the party that won the largest number of votes in 2004 parliamentary elections, he cannot offer himself as the running mate of Yudhoyono as he did in 2004. Back then, he was not chairing Golkar, but was a mere senior member of the party.

Still, Kalla brought a significant block of votes to Yudhoyono, so much so that his camp claimed Yudhoyono would not have beaten Megawati in the final round of voting had it not been for his running mate.

Kalla once confided that he would have been Megawati's running mate in 2004 had it not been for some miscommunication between him and her. According to his camp, Megawati would have won the presidency had she been more communicative about her intentions with Kalla.

There is nothing wrong with electioneering this early, and there is no law that bans politicians from announcing their intentions so far in advance. Each has his or her reasons with regard to the timing for announcing their intentions.

The bigger question in the minds of the public is whether Kalla and other members in Yudhoyono's Cabinet can really keep a straight face and claim they remain loyal to the President until the end, even as they campaign to try to deny him his second term in office.

Sooner or later, their interests will inevitably come into conflict. It's no longer a question of if, but of when. If they currently claim their allegiance to their party ends when their allegiance to the people begins, increasingly the converse is true: Their loyalty to the people ends as soon as their loyalty to the party begins.

One or two things could or should happen with regard to the Cabinet lineup to get out of this potential political mess.

Yudhoyono could exercise his presidential prerogative and make changes to his Cabinet, removing ministers who are from political parties other than his own Democratic Party.

This month would actually be timely for such moves as he marks his third year in office, just as he reshuffled his Cabinet shortly after marking his first year in office in 2005.

This would give the new ministers, presumably recruited for their technical competence rather than their political allegiances, enough time to settle in and help the President complete his five-year term.

What about Kalla? Constitutionally, Yudhoyono cannot remove his vice president because he was elected by the people on the same presidential ticket.

The two are doomed to be together. They rise and fall together. But the last thing the nation wants is for the two to quarrel, either openly or discretely, which is bound to happen sooner or later as the 2009 election approaches.

This is where statesmanship becomes important.

Since there is no way for the two elected leaders to pretend that there are no differences between them in running the government, one of them must step down. It's the statesmanly, if not the honorable, thing to do.

The same goes for members of the coalition Cabinet who come from political parties other than Yudhoyono's Democratic Party. If there is any statesmanship left in them, they know the right and ethical thing to do is for them to resign.

As we approach the election year, it will become harder for the public to distinguish between the activities of these ministers, whether they speak in their capacity as Cabinet members or as party leaders.

This is especially true with regards to their travels to the regions, where inevitably they will use the opportunity to meet with the party's rank-and-file, at the expense of the government (taxpayers).

By staying in the Cabinet, they potentially become little Trojan Horses in Yudhoyono's camp.

Yudhoyono's reelection chances hinge in large part on the performance of the economy, and there are signs that the economy is now moving to the high growth path.

It does not take a political genius to see how easy it would be for anyone in the Cabinet to foil the President's ambitions for a second term, especially if all it would take to beat him was to undermine the economy.

Our politicians should take their cue from Mohammad Hatta, who resigned as vice president in 1956 because of irreconcilable differences with president Sukarno.

Now that's what you call statesmanship.

By the looks of it, this quality is grossly missing from the current crop of politicians.

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