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n the Twitter age, six days seems like forever. That is how long it took for President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo and Vice President Jusuf Kalla to mull over and finally appoint 34 ministers to the Working Cabinet. Out of the 34, 20 are from the private sector or have extensive private-sector experience. A senior journalist said Jokowi wanted '€œCEO-type people who know how to get things done'€. Ever since he was declared the winner of the presidential election, the public has wanted his Cabinet to be one filled with professionals, calling comparisons to the zaken kabinet (Working Cabinet) of the past.

In Indonesia the first use of the Dutch term for '€œWorking Cabinet'€, or a Cabinet filled with a majority of professionals, was in 1948 under the suggestion of the Masyumi Party. The view was that appointing ministers who were leaders in the private sector or had extensive private sector experience could help bring a fresh progressive perspective, a faster way of working not burdened by bureaucracy and protocols and, overall, a more result- and service-oriented public official.

The trend increased under recent presidents: Abdurrahman Wahid'€™s Cabinet had 14 professionals out of 34 ministers, Megawati Soekarnoputri'€™s Cabinet had 15 professionals out of 30 ministers, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono'€™s first Cabinet had 17 professionals out of 34 ministers while his second had 14. But a Cabinet filled with professionals is not a panacea to achieve a clean and effective government. Professional ministers have their own challenges.

The first and probably most obvious one is the potential for conflict of interest. Appointing a person to become a regulator in the same industry where he or she has his or her business is clearly tricky. Any indications of unfair business advantage, like the issuance of odd regulations favoring certain companies, should be a cause for suspicion. When he was first elected, then president Yudhoyono wanted to issue a regulation that would prohibit ministers in his Cabinet to do business; he reiterated the same intention during his reelection campaign. Nothing came of it.

Last week Tanzania tried to do something similar; they are now in the final stages of passing a law that would ban elected leaders and civil servants from using their positions to build business empires and enrich themselves. The law will carry a maximum two-year term of imprisonment if violated.

President Jokowi should not go to such lengths, but he has the right tools at his disposal to curb conflicts of interest to achieve his objective of having a clean government. First, from a regulation standpoint, he could enforce and strengthen the use of the Law on Public Information to create a more transparent policy-making process in his ministries. The Presidential Working Unit for the Supervision and Management of Development (UKP4) under Kuntoro Mangkusubroto has successfully launched the Open Government Initiative that encourages transparency in public institutions.

This program must be kept under the spotlight to increase the ability of the ever-growing civil society to participate in and help supervise the government. This program, along with President Jokowi'€™s plans for increased e-procurement, will definitely help create a cleaner government.

Second, President Jokowi should replicate the use of the integrity pact or performance pact that was used by Yudhoyono'€™s Cabinets. The key difference would be that a violation of the pact would result in a clear punishment. Evaluate the ministers periodically, set realistic and clear targets for them to achieve, make them report their wealth and earnings scrupulously, continue consulting with the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) and other relevant institutions on any suspicious activities or transactions.

Supervisory bodies and watchdogs must also be kept independent and committed to creating a clean government. The Law on State Ministries provides authority to the President to terminate a minister for reasons that the President chooses. This is a leverage that should be used to ensure his ministers are working properly and with integrity.

The second problem with professional ministers is their limited power against an entrenched bureaucracy and the entanglement of interests inside their ministries. Bureaucracy in Indonesia is notoriously difficult; a Harvard Kennedy School study states that, '€œThe bureaucracy, a product of three decades of military rule, has not developed a conception of citizens'€™ rights or public service,'€ and concluded that there is an institutional failure in Indonesia. Incoming ministers, especially professional ones, need to adapt quickly and learn to synchronize with the bureaucracy if they want to make real changes. If not, they risk being alone at the top without the lower echelons actually doing anything to implement the minister'€™s programs.

While we applaud the appointment of professionals and the spirit of the Working Cabinet, we still must scrutinize whether the right professionals were appointed and whether they have the capability to overcome the aforementioned challenges.

We must neither forget that there are a number of civil servants, having no private sector background, that are progressive and have that '€œprofessional attitude'€ that people see in these professional ministers. The trend should not be to merely call for more and more professionals to sit as ministers, but for the President to place the right person in the right job, professional or otherwise.

Amid the applause and the congratulations, we must remain apprehensive and vigilant in reminding the President and his ministers that they have made a lot of promises that must be kept and chief among those promises were to keep a clean and effective government.