Indonesia’s new president unveiled his Cabinet yesterday, 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 politicians 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.
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 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.
