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Indonesia's new president Joko Widodo announces cabinet
Sydney Morning Herald - October 26, 2014
Retno Marsudi, the Indonesian ambassador to the Netherlands, is a surprise choice over some more highly fancied rivals, and will be the country's first female foreign minister.
She will be a key part of President Joko Widodo's cabinet of 34, announced late Sunday and due to be inaugurated on Monday.
The cabinet, which Mr Joko labelled his "Working Cabinet", was still being finalised until hours before the announcement. It includes eight women and is a mix of professional, technocratic and political appointments.
It took more than a week of furious work, and its announcement has been delayed several times after at least eight of the original candidates were knocked out by the Corruption Eradication Commission and the Financial Transactions Reports and Analysis Centre over suspicion of corruption.
The final list shows Mr Joko appears to have steered clear of some of the major pitfalls, including candidates allegedly involved in corruption or human rights abuses. However one appointee, defence minister Ryamizard Ryacudu, is controversial with human rights activists over his record in the military.
Ms Retno will replace Marty Natalegawa, who had a sometimes antagonistic relationship with Australia. She came to know Australia well in her first overseas posting as the information secretary in Canberra between 1990 and 1994. Her former boss in that posting, ambassador Sabam Siagian, said she was a "competent and diligent diplomat".
However, she had only served herself as ambassador in stable countries, Sweden and the Netherlands, and now she faced "a challenging situation" as foreign minister.
She is considered likely to stick to the mainstream Indonesian line of a "free and active" foreign policy, and maintain "a thousand friends and no enemies".
The department mainstream also regards Australia with sometimes prickly suspicion.
In a recent interview, Ms Retno said she remembered Australia well, particularly after Indonesian troops shot dead at least 250 protesters at the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili, East Timor, in 1991. The incident led to furious demonstrations in Australia led by unions and civil society.
"It was truly a challenging time for Indonesian diplomats in Australia," Ms Retno recalled in an interview with women's newspaper Nova.
"It ranged from threats and blockades to working out what to say to the media, the people and the Australian Government." She said her car had been dented by protestors one time, and another day doused in milk when she was shopping.
"Each diplomat got a 24-hour police guard... given the high level of threat, I asked my first son who was at preschool not to go to school for a week. There was one day where we couldn't get out of the office at all. We only got out after the Australian government deployed anti-protest police. Every car was escorted closely by police car who then stayed on at the diplomat's residence around the clock."
Former boss Mr Sabam said that, after Dr Natalegawa, who was unpopular in his own department, and the extremely outwardly focused former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Ms Retno would face a very challenging environment.
"Internally she has to reintegrate the foreign ministry, make it an effective and productive instrument, while externally she is facing a challenging situation – dealing with ASEAN countries, the rivalry between China and the US, and the maritime power build-up in the Indian Ocean."
Mr Joko is unfamiliar with foreign policy and will rely much more heavily on his minister than Dr Yudhoyono did.
Mr Joko appears at the last minute to have rejected two former generals from his cabinet list: Wiranto, who was implicated in human rights abuses in East Timor, and Luhut Panjaitan, who became one of the new president's closes campaign allies.
Also in Mr Joko's cabinet is Sofyan Djalil as the Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs. Mr Sofyan, as a minister in Dr Yudhoyono's cabinet, was one of those whose phones were tapped by Australian spies in 2007, leading to a six-month cooling of relations between the two countries.
Mr Joko has appointed several confidantes of his political patron, Megawati Sukarnoputri, in a sign that she retains a powerful influence.
Puan Maharani, Megawati's much-derided daughter, will be the Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture. The new Minister for State-Owned Enterprises – which still control about 40 per cent of the Indonesian economy – is Rini Soemarno, a Megawati-era trade minister.
Perhaps the most controversial appointment will be of the Minister for Defence, Ryamizard Ryacudu, who was army chief of staff under Ms Megawati, but, according to human rights body KontraS, was a hardliner in wanting to "crush" separatists in Aceh in the early 2000s, and supported special forces members facing trial for killed a Papuan rights figure, Theys Eluay in 2003.
"The law has stated that they are guilty. They must serve the sentence. However, for me, they are heroes," Ryamizard said of the Kopassus troops at the time. He was rejected for entry to the United States after troops under his command were implicated in the military killing of two US citizens in Papua in 2002.
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