Jakarta - Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's
all-but-assured landslide victory in this week's election gives him a
stronger mandate to pick professionals for his next cabinet and push
through reforms, analysts said.
Analysts said key portfolios, including the economy, were likely
to be filled with competent technocrats instead of members of his
coalition allies.
'There's a good chance that SBY will give it all-out in his second
term,' said Latif Adam, an economist at the Indonesian Institute of
Sciences, using the president's initials.
'In the past, SBY didn't want to ruffle feathers, but this is the
last chance for him to show that he can make significant
improvements,' he said of the president, who is limited to two
five-year terms and cannot run again in 2014.
An early vote count by the General Elections Commission, the
official body that organized Wednesday's presidential poll, showed
Yudhoyono leading with 61.7 per cent of the vote.
Unofficial counts showed he won a clear majority, allowing him to
avoid a September run-off.
Ahead of the voting, Yudhoyono defied pressure to pick a member of
his coalition allies, mainly Islamic parties, as his running mate and
instead chose former central bank governor Boediono, an economist
with a reputation for competence and independence.
Fachry Ali, a political analyst at the University of Indonesia,
said Yudhoyono's decision to pick Boediono, showed that he had a
focus on improving the economy.
'He wants to break away from the shackles of political parties in
decision making,' Fachry said. 'The government will be more
market-friendly.'
Although often criticized as indecisive, Yudhoyono, 59, has been
credited with some successes in his first term, including stabilizing
the economy, cracking down on deep-rooted graft and bringing peace to
rebellious Aceh province.
But critics said progress in other areas, such as infrastructure
and poverty reduction, has been slow.
Yudhoyono ran against former president Megawati Sukarnoputri and
current Vice President Jusuf Kalla in Wednesday's election. They had
28.6 and 9.8 per cent of the vote, respectively, in the commission's
tally.
Megawati said Thursday that she was considering challenging the
election results, saying the electoral commission had failed to
respond to her complaints about duplicate names on the voter rolls
and that many voters were unable to cast their ballots.
Analysts said they believed any challenge was unlikely to change
the result.
Yudhoyono, a former general who rose in the military ranks under
former dictator Suharto, is largely untainted by the excesses
associated with the late autocrat's 32-year rule.
Experts have hailed the elections as an indication of how
Indonesia has come a long way since the turmoil that marked Suharto's
departure in 1998.
A decade ago, South-East Asia's largest economy was in shambles,
being hard-hit by the region's 1997-98 financial crisis.
Until a few years ago, Indonesia still grappled with a separatist
insurgency in Aceh, deadly bombings carried out by Islamic militants
and Muslim-Christian violence in the east of the country.
Hadi Sasastro, an analyst with the Centre of Strategic and
International Studies, wrote in The Jakarta Post daily that Yudhoyono
did not owe his coalition partners anything.
'The lesson for him is that he can count on the professionals to
help him run the country,' Hadi said. 'With the mandate he has
received, he should now exert strong leadership.'
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