Indonesian President Joko Widodo gestures to the crowd during a street parade following his inauguration in Jakarta
Indonesia’s new president unveiled his Cabinet on Sunday, a compromise lineup featuring technocrats in key finance roles who will need to push painful reforms to fix the country’s slowing economy, but also including several women who supported his spectacular rise to power.
Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, a 53-year-old former furniture salesman who was sworn in as president last week amid high hopes of progressive leadership in the world’s fourth-largest country, had promised to promote professionals to top posts rather than party officials, who in Indonesia have a reputation for corruption and laziness.
Newly appointed Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Lestari Priansari Marsudi
The formation of the cabinet, which was inaugurated yesterday, was the first test for Jokowi as he seeks to fulfill promises to curb corruption, cut fuel subsidies, reduce bureaucracy and build infrastructure.
Jokowi named eight women to the lineup of 30 ministers and four coordinating ministers, of note in a country that is home to more Muslims than any other in the world. Among them is Retno Lestari Marsudi — the current ambassador to the Netherlands — who was named foreign minister, the first woman to take the post in the country’s history.
Marsudi is a career diplomat, previously an ambassador to Norway and the foreign ministry’s director general for America and Europe, according to the Indonesian embassy in The Hague’s website. She has led negotiations between Indonesia and the European Union, it said.
“She is a progressive diplomat, making the embassy to The Hague open to Indonesian civil society in Holland,” said Andreas Harsono, an Indonesian researcher for Human Rights Watch.
Jokowi has not had to handle international affairs in his previous roles as the governor of Jakarta and mayor of the city of Solo. His government faces challenges that range from Islamic State spurring homegrown terrorism, to Papuan calls for independence and an increasingly assertive China in the South China Sea.
Puan Maharani, daughter of former President Megawati Sukarnoputri, was named coordinating minister of human development and culture. Megawati was widely regarded as an ineffectual leader with a reputation for corruption, and many of Jokowi’s supporters had urged him to resist pressure to put any of her associates or family members in his Cabinet.
Jokowi took the unprecedented step of asking the country’s anti-corruption commission to vet Cabinet candidates, a process that reportedly involved several being rejected at the last minute.
Dubbing it the “Work Cabinet,” Jokowi also named former state-owned enterprises minister Sofyan Djalil coordinating minister of economics. Bambang Brodjonegoro, a respected economics academic who has worked in government ministries before, was named finance minister.
Those appointments are likely to be broadly welcomed by investors, but ministers will need to quickly take steps to reassure the market they have the clout to cut politically sensitive fuel subsidies that are a drag on economic growth and speed up infrastructure projects in the country of 250 million people.
“It is not that impressive, but at least some ministers are what the market was hoping for,” said Standard Chartered Bank economist Fauzi Ichsan, referring to Djalil and Brodjonegoro. MDT/AP/Bloomberg
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