New deputies: (From left) National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) Deputy Chairman Lukita Diansyah Tuwo, National Education Deputy Minister Fasri Jalal, Cabinet Secretary Dipo Alam and Defense Deputy Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoedin talk at the State Palace, Jakarta, on Wednesday. Lukita, Fasri and Sjafrie were sworn in as deputies by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. JP/Ricky Yudhistira
Last minute delays in the inauguration of two new deputy ministers on Wednesday revealed President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to be unaware that the two officials did not meet qualifications as required by the law.
The Presidential Office announced to the public on Tuesday that Yudhoyono will inaugurate Wednesday a Cabinet Secretary and five new deputy ministers.
However, Yudhoyono only inaugurated four officials, including former deputy for trade, industry, and small and medium enterprises empowerment at the office of the Coordinating Economic Minister, Dipo Alam, as the new Cabinet Secretary, and former director general for higher education Fasli Jalal as Deputy Education Minister.
Also inaugurated Wednesday were former deputy for development financing at the National
Development Planning Board Lukita Dinarsyah as the Deputy State National Development Planning Minister, and former defense ministry secretary-general Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin as Deputy Defense Minister.
Yudhoyono delayed at the last minute the appointment of former head of the Indonesian Doctors
Association, Fahmi Idris, as deputy health minister and head of the Fiscal Policy Agency, Anggito Abimanyu, as deputy finance minister because of their failure to meet “administrative” requirements.
Shortly after the inauguration ceremony, State Secretary Sudi Silalahi acknowledged before the press that the President had been actually scheduled to also inaugurate the other two officials.
“We have had to delay the appointment of the two deputy ministers because it appears that they haven’t met some administrative requirements, which say that deputy ministers must hold the echelon 1A in terms of structural position,” said Sudi referring to Article 10 of the state ministry law.
“We’ve just received their CVs… We cannot complete the inaugurations against regulations we’ve made ourselves,” Sudi said.
Both Fahmi and Anggito are reportedly only echelon 1B officials.
Sudi said their appointment might wait until their echelon status was raised to IA, as specified in the 2009 presidential regulation on appointment of deputy ministers.
Delays due to such basic reasons drew observers’ criticisms, that such glitches should not be
tolerated.
“People surrounding the President, especially the State Secretary, have made him look stupid as either he did not read the law or he did not review the deputy ministers candidate correctly,” University of Indonesia’s law expert Refly Harun said.
Another law expert Irman Putra Sidin said that for this error, the President should have fired his State Secretary as the incident showed the latter was not up to his job.
Political analyst Ibrahim Muhtadi said that the incident was a real embarrassment to the President
as this the second time he had to delay inauguration of officials after he had made a public announcement.
Last October, Yudhoyono delayed installing Gita Wirjawan as the new chief of the Investment Coordinating Board for the same reason.
“He has embarrassed not only himself but also the candidates,” Ibrahim said.
Yudhoyono said in his inauguration speech that “My main consideration in appointing the deputy ministers is linked to the coverage and workloads of the related ministries as well as to priorities and targets that the Indonesia United Cabinet II wants to achieve.”
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