By Max Lane
After having being forced to accept the armed forces (ABRI) vice-presidential candidate, Try Sutrisno, President Suharto has chosen a new cabinet which deliberately excludes figures close to ABRI. It comprises a select few older political cronies who have neither a political base nor any political authority in the eyes of the political elite and the mass of the population.
The two key political positions went to retired generals of Suharto's generation who owe their long and unspectacular careers to Suharto. The former transmigration minister, retired General Soesilo Soedarman, replaces aged retired Admiral Sudomo as minister for political and security affairs. The former governor of West Java, retired General Yoggie Memet, has been appointed minister for home affairs.
Green Left Weekly's Jakarta sources say that ABRI lobbied unsuccessfully for a senior political appointment for General Harsudiyono Hartas, ABRI's chief spokesperson on political and social affairs.
By excluding people with ABRI connections, Suharto is prolonging the conflict with military headquarters. This guarantees that ABRI will continue its oppositional role and will most likely use its representation in parliament to raise issues that embarrass Suharto. Thus the military will continue its contradictory role of being vocal in support of modest democratic reform in parliament and in Jakarta while implementing repressive measures against grassroots activism and against the movement for self-determination in East Timor.
Most of the senior cabinet appointments in the economic and technocratic ministries have gone to close associates and collaborators of Suharto's initial choice as vice-president, industry and technology minister Habibie. These appointments serve Suharto in two ways.
First, they keep power away from ABRI by concentrating control over government departments in the hands of those most personally loyal to Suharto. Second, they remove from the cabinet those economic ministers closest to the World Bank and IMF and who have operated as a brake on the extravagant commercial activities of Suharto's children and cronies.
In particular the former senior economic ministers, such as Ali Wardhana, fought to postpone or even cancel many mega-projects initiated by the Suharto children or cronies and which relied on massive commercial loans from private foreign banks. The IMF-World Bank-oriented ministers always tried to keep foreign borrowing within the limits set by the consortium of imperialist governments that decides annually upon new credits for Indonesia.
The new ministers have a record of supporting state-guaranteed business mega-projects.
So far ABRI has remained silent on the cabinet. Economists supporting deregulation and privatisation (excluding privatisation into the hands of the children and cronies) have stated their concerns about the cabinet.
At the grassroots level, most concern and contempt has been expressed towards the new minister for labour, Abdul Latief. Latief, 53, was the founder and first chairman of the Young Businessmen's Association in 1972-3. He is now the millionaire managing director of a major Jakarta department store business. This is the first time a prominent Jakarta capitalist has been appointed labour minister.