Yudhoyono Warns Against ‘Dangerous Candidate’

Jakarta Globe, Ezra Sihite, May 07, 2014

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono greets presidential hopeful Prabowo
Subianto at the State Palace on Dec. 24, 2013. (Rumgapres Photo/Abror Rizki)

Jakarta. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has taken an apparent swipe at Prabowo Subianto, one of the men vying to replace him, in a YouTube video warning Indonesians not to vote for a candidate espousing a nationalist platform through “dangerous promises.”

Yudhoyono did not mention the candidate by name in the video, uploaded by his Democratic Party, but warned against calls made by one of them to nationalize all foreign assets in the country.

“Perhaps those who listen to this rhetoric would say this is great and daring and highly nationalistic,” Yudhoyono said in the video that was uploaded on Tuesday and titled “SBY on the presidential hopefuls’ promises.”

“But if he becomes president and nationalizes all foreign assets, including deals made since the Sukarno and Suharto eras up to the present, then we can be taken to international arbitration,” he went on. “And if we lose, it will jeopardize our economy and it will have a massive impact.

“I would not choose or support him because I know the risk would threaten our economy,” he added.

Prabowo is the only one of the leading candidates who has called for nationalization of key industries. A shrewd businessman in his own right, however, Prabowo’s jingoistic rhetoric is seen by observers as just a ploy to pander to voters.

Yudhoyono urged the candidates for the July 9 presidential election to explain their platforms and programs to voters.

He also emphasized the importance of the candidates choosing their running mates based on their competency and not on political horse-trading. He claimed that he had been in sole charge of picking his running mate, and that he had never gone back on the decision.

“It’s a sin to jerk people around, because the vice president is important,” he said in the video. “My view is that the vice president is not a spare wheel.”

Yudhoyono also claimed to have never reneged on a promise made to his running mate.

In 2009, he famously dumped his vice president, Jusuf Kalla, after his first five years in office, and went on to win re-election with Boediono, the former central bank governor, as his number two.

Yudhoyono also called on his eventual successor not to form coalitions with other parties on the basis of how many seats each bloc would get in the cabinet, saying this form of transactional politics went against the mandate given to the winning candidate by voters.

“Don’t count seats or positions or this ministry or that ministry. I don’t think that’s good,” he said.

Yudhoyono’s own Democrats won enough votes in the 2009 legislative election to be able to nominate him unaided, but still went on to form a coalition with five other parties — much to the government’s chagrin later on when two of them, the Golkar Party and the Prosperous Justice Party, or PKS, refused to toe the Democrats’ line on key policies such as a subsidized fuel price hike.

Yudhoyono said in the video that if his would-be successors sought to build coalitions, they should do so with parties that shared the same platform and vision.