TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - There is one remaining task that needs to be done following the cabinet restructuring three weeks ago. To this day, Coordinating Minister for Politics, Law and Security Luhut Pandjaitan is concurrently the Presidential Chief of Staff. The President must amend this situation. Before a replacement is in place, it would be advantageous for all concerned time to review the function and the role of this strategic office, given its proximity to the center of power.
This office has sparked two essential questions since its establishment. One is whether it was really needed, given that the President already has 36 ministers at hand. Secondly, the function of the chief of staff overlaps with those of ministers and coordinating ministers. As a comparison, the United States, populated by 420 million people is governed only by 15 ministers and a presidential chief of staff, while China, with almost 1.5 billion population needs only 25 ministers to get its cabinet going.
To be sure, the number of population was not only Joko Widodo's consideration when he issued Presidential Regulation No. 26/2015 as the legal basis for the Office of the Presidential Staff. The functions, according to the decree, cover political communication, the management of strategic issues and the oversight of national priority programs, i.e. infrastructure, maritime affairs, food, energy and tourism. Those are all Jokowi's primary economic programs.
The functions of this Office of the Presidential Staff grew out of the UKP4 (Presidential Task Force on Development Supervision and Control) under the administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyoo. Led by Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, the UKP4 was tasked with aiding the President in monitoring the execution and oversight of development program. An additional task was to evaluate the ministers' performance.
Jokowi has all the right to form his own non-cabinet group to accelerate the duties of the President and Vice-President. What should be of concern is that the functions of this institution do not clash with the work of the cabinet ministers, particularly since our governance system does not indicate whether ministers should report to the Office of the President, something that unfortunately, has happened.
The function of special groups like the Office of the Presidential Staff should be more in providing the Chief Executive with advise on making the proper decisions. Such advice is needed, for example, to prevent Jokowi from appointing someone so old and inactive for so long in the intelligence business, to be made chief of the State Intelligence Agency (BIN). Or giving Jokowi a broader perspective when he chooses his military commander-in-chief, by looking at sources other than the conventional leadership ladder.
In many developed nations, the President appoints competent people to strengthen the cabinet's performance. The US has been applying this since the era of President Franklin Roosevelt during World War II, when he established the West Wing of the White House, where experts, intellectuals and professionals would work to provide the President with the necessary information and reports. This office still exists today, in the presidency of Barack Obama. West Wing staff help the Chief Executive to form strategies, assess his programs and formulate policies without having to publicize them.
President Jokowi should take a look at successful formats in other countries to avoid the dualism between the President's Office and the cabinet ministers. With a restructuring of the organization, he should be able to make the two sides work together without overlapping functions and authority. In this way, the Office of the President's Staff can be both independent and complementary. (*)
