President as a Leader

KOMPAS/WISNU WIDIANTORO (NUT)

Yudi Latif

Presidential election fever has begun to spread nationwide. A common symptom of the fever is fake awareness. All the good things and achievements the country has made seem to belong to the President alone. On the other hand, the President is also seen to have solutions for all the problems and challenges the nation faces.

However, no matter how great the quality of a president, he or she will mean nothing without a collective commitment to reforming state governance. In this regard, bureaucracy plays a central role in the context of the modern state as de facto state power is never carried out by the president or the legislature alone, but by routine government administration. No matter how loud the presidential campaigns or the legislative debates get, meaningful change will never come as long as the bureaucracy of government workers – as the actual implementers of governance – remains unresponsive.

In the context of improving bureaucratic administration, there is a vociferous fantasy of the president being a manager-in-chief of government bureaucracy in managing thousands of government agencies and millions of civil servants and military and police personnel. People should wake up from such a fantasy. Such a gigantic government bureaucracy with workers amounting to more than the entire population of a province could not possibly be managed by a single centralized figure.

After all, the constitutional status of the president’s managerial reach is not that far-ranging. The majority of civil servants do not get their instructions directly from the president, but instead through regulations that bring forth government agencies with clearly defined roles. Therefore, it makes sense to name bureaucracy the fourth pillar of government.

On this foundation, political scientist Richard Rose said, “A president can no more manage the whole of government than he could manage a herd of wild horses”. Presidency expert Stephen Hess said, “Rather than chief manager, the president is the chief political officer of a republic”. Therefore, the main responsibility of a president is to enact a small amount of significant political decisions, including setting national priorities, which are interpreted into the state budget and legislation proposals and to improve policies to ensure the safety of the state.

As chief political officer, the president’s main duty is to lead, instead of to manage the government. As leader of the government, the president is expected to act systematically to define his leadership mandates and character. In defining his leadership mandate, the president should at first have a working ideology in the form a set of basic principles that will guide his or her policies.

Such working ideologies should be declared during the campaign, to give a benchmark of values and a beacon of direction for voters. With regard to the relation of a president’s ideology with that of his political party, we find that it is difficult today to find political parties in Indonesia with clear working ideology. No wonder, then, that our presidents often have no clear basic principles and characters.

On top of this working ideology, a platform can be derived with clear priorities. The president must show focus in defining and effectiveness in chasing his or her substantive policies, in order to facilitate the mobilization of resources and to offer a sense of direction for government workers, the general public and the media. The ambition to resolve all problems at once will only invite the risk of overall failure.

In “leading” the government, the challenge of future presidents is understanding that the main problem of Indonesian government bureaucracy is the imbalance between the wide-ranging state power and the state’s lack of capacity to impose its authority. During the New Order era, this wide-ranging state power was coupled with the state’s influence and authority to act effectively – despite its disregard for principles of democracy at certain times. In the Reform Era, the scope of state power has widened even more as the number of state institutions and their workers has multiplied and regional governments have seen their authority increase. However, the state’s capacity to deliver and to uphold laws has decreased due to political parties’ interests.

Therefore, the main priority of the presidency should be a simplification of the scope of state power through simplifying state institutions and bureaucracy; instead of adding new ministries, commissions, bodies, task forces, expert staff members and others to the state bureaucracy. Understandably, such work is too burdensome for a president when the number of political parties and “volunteers” (with vested interests) are not limited. A coalition of many parties and interests requires wide-ranging accommodation, which in turn will only ensnare a president in fulfilling promises of improving state bureaucracy.

An ideal president for the future is one who can lead the government strongly and effectively. Strong leadership requires courage in making changes despite the subsequent limited compromise with political coalitions and interest groups. Meanwhile, effective leadership means having the ability to drive all stakeholders in reorganizing state governance. The courage to make fundamental changes requires the boldness to take risks. However, there is also a risk for presidents who pursue safer paths: missed opportunities, missed momentum and growing public cynicism.

Yudi Latif, Lecturer at Yogyakarta State University