JAKARTA. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. This old adage was apparent at the House of Representatives on Thursday as Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati squared off once more with her political foes.
Many still vividly remember the days and hours of televised grilling by lawmakers that Sri Mulyani had to undergo over the controversial 2008 Bank Century bailout. She was accused of abusing her authority during the Rp 6.7 trillion (US$506 million) bailout.
Years later, on Thursday, one of the world’s most powerful women according to Forbes was greeted warmly at the House and even exchanged pantun (poetic quatrains) with a House member.
“A dove pecks on a worm, frangipani flowers blossom. The state budget is intended for the people, it must be managed with wisdom,” long time pantun fan Sri Mulyani said in response to a lawmaker’s poem in her first working meeting with Commission XI on Thursday.
The commission, which oversees financial affairs, was at the forefront of attacks on Sri in the past. Aired live by local television channels, the sight of the finance minister listening to a barrage of shouting and criticism from lawmakers while murmuring prayers with prayer beads in her hand became an iconic moment.
This time around, Sri Mulyani will have to face lawmakers to get her 2017 state budget passed into law. The budget will promote smaller but more realistic state spending and revenue targets.
Last month, Sri Mulyani accepted an offer from President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to once again serve as the nation’s finance minister. In 2010, she had enough of the political pressure and resigned from her post to take a job as a managing director at the World Bank in Washington DC, with a farewell message: “I will be back”.
“Words are prayers, and back she is indeed. Let’s give a round of applause for the finance minister,” Commission XI chairman Melchias Markus Mekeng said in his opening statement during the meeting.
She is back in the Cabinet at a time when the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) — the party that led the political inquiry into the Bank Century bailout case in 2010 — is now the ruling party.
“The last time we met [our party] was in opposition. Now we support you, Ibu,” PDI-P legislator Eva Kusuma Sundari said to the finance minister during the hearing.
One of Sri Mulyani’s most vocal enemies in the House’s inquiry committee into the Bank Century bailout, Muhammad Misbakhun, has now softened on her. The Golkar Party lawmaker pledged to support Sri Mulyani and the 2017 state budget proposal she has designed.
“It’s not personal,” Misbakhun said when asked whether he still considered the finance minister to be a foe.
Lawmakers will need to approve the state budget for it to be effective. The budget encompasses a wide range of policies and targets from taxes to state revenues, government spending, ministerial budgets, village funds and regional transfers.
Sri Mulyani admitted to a sense of déjà vu when she sat in the House’s meeting room again.
“It feels like turning the clock back 10 years,” Sri Mulyani told Commission XI lawmakers. (Satria Sambijantoro)
