JAKARTA: The House of Representatives and the administration of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo have agreed to remove a legal limit on the number of ministries a president may have, a change that would allow president-elect Prabowo Subianto to expand his cabinet once he takes office next month.
In a series of back-to-back meetings on Monday (Sept 8), members of the House Legislation Body (Baleg) and representatives of the outgoing Jokowi administration rushed to revise the 2008 Ministry Law, which limits the number of ministries to 34.
The meetings concluded with the government agreeing to the House’s proposal to scrap the limit.
All nine political party factions in Baleg also agreed on Monday to allow the number of the ministries to be “determined by a sitting president in accordance with the needs of their administration”.
This included the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), whose politician Sturman Panjaitan had earlier questioned how the “needs” of the government would be determined.
The PDI-P, Jokowi’s erstwhile sponsor, parted ways with the outgoing President over his support for Prabowo rather than the PDI-P’s own nominee in February’s presidential election. The party has yet to decide whether it will support or oppose the Prabowo administration.
Representing the government at one of the meetings, Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Minister Abdullah Azwar Anas of the PDI-P said, “The government believes this bill will support our collective effort to fix Indonesia’s governance system.”
A House plenary session to pass the bill into law is expected to be held as soon as Thursday, said Baleg deputy chair Achmad Baidowi, who led one of the meetings on Monday. But it could also take place weeks later, he added, though he asserted that it would be done before the tenure of current lawmakers comes to an end on Sept. 30.
The outgoing legislature, dominated by lawmakers from parties that support both outgoing President Jokowi and his successor Prabowo, has pushed to revise the law since May but only started formal deliberations with the government on Monday.
Prabowo, who won February’s presidential election with Jokowi’s eldest son Gibran Rakabuming Raka as his running mate, will be inaugurated on Oct 20.
Currently the defence minister, Prabowo is reportedly considering assembling a bigger cabinet, which would require a legal revision such as the one agreed to in the House. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
