A slow news day, visualized

Even during the largest of new stories—think Obama getting inaugurated—it is pretty rare for three major papers to manage to reproduce the exact same photo. Which is why this spread struck me as so indicative of the absolute news paralysis currently gripping Jakarta. Here we have three distinct type of paper (from left to right): the political gossip monger, the investigative and interview tabloid, and the broadsheet paper of record. Even more tickling is the content of the photo, which is a completely pedestrian farewell picture featuring the outgoing cabinet, including the ministers who were sacked during the past five years.

“Hey Bang, why don’t you and the wife come down to the palace on Friday for a big send-off photo? It’s been too long. You still remember how to get here?”

What’s really going on here is that everyone—media, corporate world, analysts, political operatives, etc—is waiting for details of the President’s new cabinet to emerge. This may strike Americans as strange, after all our government functioned for months before Obama even managed to get a majority of his appointments confirmed.

Even though Indonesia, like many democracies, has an executive, legislature, and judiciary, the actual mechanics of the government are pretty unique (and often complex). Take the paramount importance of a given cabinet minister. As the executive’s representative on issues from Energy to Law to Cooperatives to Women’s Empowerment, each individual minister is crucial to virtually all policy making within their portfolio.

Why?

Parliamentary rules prevent proposed legislation from advancing in a plenary without a representative from the executive (if not the individual minister then one of their deputies) present. Moreover, once a bill becomes law (which, coincidentally, can occur without the president’s signature, rendering the aforementioned rule the executive’s veto over legislation) the onus falls to the relevant ministries to issue the relevant legal regulations that define and implement the content and meaning of the law. The Constitutional Court takes up any discrepancies that may ensue.

As you can imagine, ministries truly become institutionally defined by the personality who heads them (this is a weakness of Indonesian politics to begin with, but I digress), which in turn has serious implications for policy. Vested interests (such a politicians with business connections) can leverage their power to remarkably obstructionist ends, blocking reforms and introducing damaging policies.

So, the capital waits for the clarity that strangely only a minister can provide. Businesses and political analysts watch this sort of thing with especially heightened interest; any individual minister can literally change the entire outlook for their portfolio. The key debate right now is focused on candidates who are “technocrats” versus those who are “political representatives.” The conventional thinking goes that the former are good for reform whereas the latter are interested in a narrow set of protectionist, market-impeding policies. The president (the same guy who invited the ministers he sacked back for a photo-op) will certainly accommodate both.

But, in the meantime, everyone will keep on whispering, gossiping, and holding their breath.