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Lutfi out on cooking oil slipup. Can Zulkifli offer a quick fix?
As Zulkifli takes up the helm at the Trade Ministry, he cannot be expected to fix the cooking oil debacle without a single agency to handle DMO sales and facilitate exporters.
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President Joko Widodo (center) speaks to the media on June 15, 2022 at the State Palace in Jakarta, flanked by newly installed Trade Minister Zulkifli Hasan (left) and Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning Minister Hadi Tjahjanto, former commander of the Indonesian Military (TNI). (Reuters/Willy Kurniawan)
T
hat Muhammad Lutfi would be fired as trade minister in last week’s Cabinet reshuffle by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo was widely predicted, due to Lutfi’s miserable and highly public failure to stabilize the prices of cooking oil over the past six months.
But the appointment of Zulkifli Hasan, chairman of the National Mandate Party (PAN), as the new trade minister has vindicated arguments that Jokowi was not really seeking an experienced professional from the food sector, and simply wanted to strengthen his coalition government instead.
Despite his previous experience as chairman of the Investment Coordinating Board, ambassador to both Japan and the United States, and trade minister from February to October in 2014, Lutfi seemed to be the least politically controversial “cow” to be sacrificed to accommodate PAN in the Indonesia Onward Cabinet.
Actually, the blame for the cooking oil crisis should not rest squarely on Lutfi’s shoulders, but across the inadequate capacities of the agriculture and industry ministries. It also belongs to the coordinating minister of economic affairs with respect to implementing the market interventions.
Lutfi is the sixth trade minister Jokowi has appointed since October 2014. The five previous trade ministers were also dismissed for their poor performance in stabilizing the prices of staple foods and basic necessities.
After all the damage from the series of erratic measures by his predecessors, Zulkifli’s first challenge is to improve the relations that have soured between the government and palm oil companies. Mutual distrust now seems to exist between the government and big industry players after the government’s strong-handed measures over the past six months.
Officials have alleged that big palm oil companies had joined together to form a kind of “mafia”, while the Business Competition Supervisory Commission (KPPU) accused major producers of engaging in cartel-like practices. But none have produced any strong evidence that would stand up in court. Even the Attorney General’s Office has yet to produce ironclad evidence of any criminal activity, two months after it arrested several senior executives of three major companies as well as the director general of foreign trade.
