The market welcomes Agus
The Jakarta Post | Sun, 05/23/2010 11:21 AM | Opinion
The market is likely comfortable with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s appointment Thursday of experienced and internationally-renown banker Agus Martowardojo as finance minister to replace World Bank-bound Sri Mulyani Indrawati.
Replacing Mulyani has temporarily reconciled the Yudhoyono government with Golkar, the Houses’s second-largest faction. The hatchet may have been buried for now, but not the issue.
Agus had initially been tipped as one of the four leading candidates, but his appointment came as a surprise. Two days earlier, Agus was re-elected to a second five-year term as state-owned Bank Mandiri’s chief executive officer.
Agus, a career bureaucrat, and Deputy Finance Minister Anny Ratnawati, the finance ministry’s budget director general, will make a good team for continuing reform both at the ministry and at the taxation and customs directorates general.
Both have a broad knowledge of macroeconomics, technical competence, managerial experience and unquestioned integrity — all of which are needed to manage the state budget, accelerate the reforms within the industry and work with the House to complete several badly-needed laws.
Ratnawati will offset Agus’ lack of fiscal experience, while Agus’ experience at Bank Mandiri will foster improvements in the ministry’s administration.
President Yudhoyono and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak agreed Tuesday in Kuala Lumpur to improve employment conditions for an estimated two million Indonesian workers in Malaysia .
The agreement will give Indonesian maids, construction workers and plantation laborers better legal protection, and accelerate the end of Indonesia ’s ban on sending maids to Malaysia .
Indonesian migrant workers will soon get a one day off each week. Other issues, such as a minimum wage or regulation of recruitment and placement charges, remain unresolved.
Indonesia banned last June sending more domestic workers to Malaysia after a series of abuse allegations had raised problems for the 230,000 Indonesian maids in the country.
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Indonesia deserves its reputation as one of the most corrupt countries in the world: hardly a week passes without several officials or politicians sent to prison for corruption.
The Corruption Court sentenced four former lawmakers to prison Monday, after they were found guilty of accepting bribes in Miranda S. Goeltom’s election in 2004 as Bank Indonesia ’s senior deputy governor.
The multimillion dollar bribery case implicated more than 40 former legislators from last term’s House banking and financial affairs commission, but only four legislators have been brought to trial.
Golkar Party politician Hamka Yamdhu received the heaviest sentence, and was sent to prison for two and a half years and ordered to pay a Rp 100 million (US$10,900) fine. Hamka was found guilty of accepting Rp 7.3 billion of traveler’s checks from a middleman and distributing them to 12 Golkar politicians in the House.
Endin A. J. Soefihara, a former House member from the United Development Party, was sentenced to 15 months in prison and a Rp 100 million fine. Dudhie Makmun Murod from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and Udju Djuhaeri from the military/police faction each received a two-year prison term and a Rp 100 million fine.
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Life in Bangkok inched back to normal Friday, as authorities cleaned up the Thai capital in the wake of recent riots and arson attacks by anti-government protesters.
News agency reports said thousands of “red shirt” protesters, who are mainly rural or urban poor people, have deserted their once-barricaded camp in a posh central Bangkok shopping area.
In a sign of government concern about new violence, a nighttime curfew for Bangkok and 23 provinces was extended for three days. Many roads in central Bangkok remained closed, and the city’s subway was not immediately reopened.
Thailand has not had a curfew since a bloody government suppression of protesters 18 years ago.
Three protest leaders, Veera Musikapong, Kokaew Pikulthong and Weng Tojirakarn, have surrendered to police. Arisman Pongruengrong, another leader, remains at large, the military said.
Foreign investors are concerned about the political crisis’ long-term affects, citing fears that armed protesters may go underground and launch a guerilla war throughout Thailand . Contemporary Thailand has never seen such a protracted period of urban violence, nor has been as close to an all-out civil war.
The red shirts have demanded new elections and said that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva lacks a mandate. Abhisit came to power with the tacit support of the military in a controversial parliamentary vote in 2008.
Abhisit withdrew last week an offer to hold new elections. The red shirts support Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister who was ousted by the military in 2006. Thaksin lives in self-imposed exile to avoid a prison term for abusing power.
— Vincent Lingga
