Sri Mulyani Indrawati, who resigned as
finance minister to take a position at the World Bank.
With Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati’s term close to an end, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Tuesday denied that her move to become managing director of the World Bank was the result of a political deal.
Separately on Tuesday, Sri Mulyani called her departure a victory and said she could “not afford” to be part of a new political realignment.
“No one pressured me,” Yudhoyono said during an official visit to Kuala Lumpur. “No one should be allowed to pressure me, because the task of appointing or releasing a minister is the president’s prerogative. The process is transparent.”
The president ridiculed the idea floated in some quarters that he had engineered Sri Mulyani’s high-level appointment as a way out of the stand-off between her and lawmakers, many from among his own coalition partners, over the 2008 Bank Century bailout.
He promised that a successor with “integrity and capability” would be named “in a couple of days.”
Meanwhile, in a public lecture in Jakarta, Sri Mulyani said her departure was a personal victory over opponents of reform.
“There are several parties saying that I’m running away, or that I have lost the battle,” she said in a lecture billed as a talk on ethics and public policy. “I have won ... because they were not able to dictate to me, and I have not betrayed my pride and conscience.”
In her strongest remarks since the announcement of her resignation two weeks ago, she stopped short of naming her opponents but made it clear that the political battle that began late last year when the Golkar Party led a House investigation into the Century affair had resulted in an uncomfortable reality.
“I am not a politician, but I understand politics,” she told a packed ballroom at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Pacific Place. “There has been a marriage of two political sides and it will not uphold the public’s needs,” she said in an apparent reference to the fallout from the Bank Century case and recent moves to bring Golkar closer to the president’s ruling coalition. “I cannot afford to be part of it.”
With speculation rising that a new coalition joint secretariat with Golkar head Aburizal Bakrie as managing chairman is part of a political realignment made possible by Sri Mulyani’s resignation, Yudhoyono seemed eager to calm fears that politics would guide the choice of a new finance minister.
The new finance chief must “work as hard as Sri Mulyani has over the last five years,” Yudhoyono said. “The candidate I have in mind is well qualified to deal with fiscal policy, continue the reforms of the tax and customs offices, and enhance the accountability of state finances.”
Also on Tuesday, Golkar lawmaker Bambang Soesatyo, a fierce Sri Mulyani critic, said that House of Representatives Commission III, which handles financial affairs, was planning to summon Darmin Nasution, the acting Bank Indonesia governor and a leading reformist candidate for finance minister, over a case of alleged tax fraud involving agribusiness giant Wilmar International Limited.
Bambang also said the House would probe officials from the Tax Directorate over the case.
The directorate has been investigating several of Bakrie’s companies for months and Sri Mulyani has said that the House’s Century probe was initiated by Bakrie in retaliation for reforms she instituted in the ministry.
Wilmar denied Bambang’s allegations in a strongly worded statement.
In her remarks, Sri Mulyani remained combative to the end. “We do some good in this country for the people, but we end up being frustrated. This has been evident ever since the days of President Suharto,” she ended, to audience cheers and a standing ovation.
