News reports in the past week have undoubtedly been dominated by the investigation results of the House of Representatives’ special inquiry committee into the high-profile Bank Century case that implicates the country’s top-ranking officials, mainly those in the financial sector.
The political uproar – visibly a tug-of-war between the parliament and the coalition of the ruling government – reached its climax Wednesday when the House plenary meeting gave a resounding vote of no confidence to the government’s November 2008 decision to bail out the then troubled Bank Century.
A total of 325 legislators from the Golkar Party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) and the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura), plus a defector from the National Awakening Party (PKB), supported calls for legal measures against those responsible for the bailout, including Vice President Boediono and Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati. Both Boediono and Sri Mulyani – in their capacity as Bank Indonesia governor and Finance Minister at the time of the 2008 bailout – were blamed for authorizing the bailout that increased tenfold to Rp 6.76 trillion (US$716 million) from the initial estimate.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the two most-frequently mentioned officials — Mulyani and Boediono — have all made public statements in defense of the government’s policy to bail out the bank.
Mulyani took the lead in defending the government’s decision in a media conference on Thursday afternoon. She insisted that her decision to bail out the bank was to prevent an economic crisis from happening in the country akin to that which occurred in 1998, and that her decision was based on the authority she was entitled to by existing laws.
Yudhoyono came in the defense of the policy later on Thursday evening. “The decision to save Bank Century was the right one … It would be inappropriate to take legal action against [government] policies,” the President told the Indonesian people in a televised speech.
Meanwhile, Boediono made his own official statement on Friday. Boediono similarly defended the government’s policy – only in a low-profile manner. He hinted that he would not be willing to resign from his post as requested by many, but expressed his commitment to comply with whatever the decision of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) if the recommendation made upon by the House’s plenary meeting on Wednesday was followed up by the Assembly — the country’s supreme political institution.
The government-parliament dispute, however, did not lessen the importance of the visit of former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan, who was in the capital on Thursday to address dozens of high-ranking Indonesian officials in a lecture on “The Challenge for Leaders in a Multi-polar World”.
