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A cabinet reshuffle is not likely in the immediate future, political analysts said on Sunday, pointing out that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will not risk appearing to be seeking vindication so soon after three members of his Democratic Party-led coalition voted to seek a criminal investigation into the handling of the 2008 Bank Century bailout.

“Reshuffling the cabinet would create the image of [Yudhoyono] being a vindictive person, bent on maintaining the hard feelings toward his coalition members,” said Burhanuddin Muhtadi, a political analyst at the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI).

He said the president’s Thursday night speech, in which he cited the sterling records of Vice President Boediono and Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, may have reflected his hurt emotions but signaled an effort to conduct “political introspection.”

Yudhoyono said Boediono and Sri Mulyani were not guilty of illegally bailing out Bank Century, as lawmakers have accused, and were instead saviors of the nation.

“He does not want to disclose his strategy to discipline the three uncontrollable coalition parties,” Burhanuddin said.

Democratic Party officials warned that the Golkar Party, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and the United Development Party (PPP) would be kicked out of the coalition after last Wednesday’s vote, with politician Ruhut Sitompul saying the Democrats would “now get nine more seats in the cabinet,” hinting at a reshuffle.

Burhanuddin said it would be “too extreme” for Yudhoyono to remove non-Democrat ministers in the near future. “It would only benefit the opposition, particularly in gathering support for launching a strike at the government, even via impeachment procedures, not only against Boediono, but Yudhoyono.”

Yudhoyono included four PKS members in his cabinet, three from Golkar and two from the PPP. The three parties, together with the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) and the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura), voted to seek criminal investigations over the bailout.

Refly Harun, a state administration expert at the University of Indonesia, said that even though the House’s recommendations were not legally binding, the political decision would encourage law-enforcement agencies to conduct investigations quicker and without fear, since they had gained the majority support of the House special committee.

“The political decision actually pressures the Attorney General’s Office, the National Police and the Corruption Eradication Commission [KPK] to speed up their investigations into the Century case,” Refly said.

Ibramsyah, a political analyst at the University of Indonesia, said he foresaw Yudhoyono with the same cabinet members until the end of the year. “If he reshuffles the cabinet in a hurry it will only show his failure in picking the ministers,” he said.

The Democratic Party has previously spoken of the possibility of bringing the PDI-P into the coalition, should the time come to replace one of the coalition members. But Hasto Kristianto, the PDI-P’s deputy secretary general, said on Sunday: “I think it’s a bit difficult to do. We have different ideologies. The Democrats stand by a liberal economic system while we uphold a pro-people economy.”

He acknowledged that the Democrats had lobbied his party over the possibility. However, he said he had yet to hear of any offer of ministerial positions.  Febriamy Hutapea & Muninggar Saraswati