G

iven the fairly adequate time that president-elect Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo and vice president-elect Jusuf Kalla have had to prepare their core governance team, we presume that Jokowi will be able to reveal his Cabinet lineup at least one or two days after his inauguration on Monday. Any further delay in forming his Cabinet would raise questions about who is really in charge or even cause suspicion that horse-trading is still going on.

Certainly, as the most pressing challenges for the new government lie in the economic sector, the market and the general public'€™s attention will focus on the economic team within the Cabinet, which consists of the ministers of finance, trade, industry, mining, forestry, maritime affairs and fisheries, agriculture, state-owned enterprises, tourism and creative economy and transportation.

But given the vital role of infrastructure and regional administrations, we strongly suggest that the economic team also includes the public works and home ministers.

As Jokowi is a former businessman, he must realize that integrity and competence should be the basic assets of the economic team. Even more important is that both Jokowi and Kalla protect the economic team from intervention by vested interests and should see to it that the coordinating economic minister, as the chief economic minister, is fully in charge of making and directing economic policies based on the strategy set by the president.

The coordinating economic minister and his or her core team should be capable of improving the credibility and consistency of the government'€™s economic policy-making and implementation. The coordinating minister should be able to comprehend the importance of a coherent and credible strategy that outlines how the various individual policies connect with each other.

He should see to it that the team considers bureaucratic action more important than bureaucratic procedures and rigidities, and resolve problems by executive fiat immediately on the spot.

As the country'€™s economic ills have been rightly diagnosed and appropriate policy prescriptions have been formulated by the almost two dozen working groups set up by Jokowi late in August, the economic team should be able to immediately draw the right scale of priorities, sequencing the policies.

Therefore, the monthly meetings chaired by the coordinating economic minister should be developed into an effective business-solution forum where all problems related to economic activities, notably investment and trade, are solved quickly.

This forum should operate like an operations center whereby economics ministers, top bureaucrats, analysts and leaders of business associations discuss and decide on policy measures to fix strategic problems, such as barriers to infrastructure development.

The team cannot work miracles, but impeccable integrity, credibility and competence among its members would help enlighten the market about the broad direction in which the economy was being steered.