Ibu Ani Yudhoyono: "Saya tidak Pernah Campuri Urusan Kabinet"
Indonesian Firs Lady Says She Never Intervenes in Cabinet Affairs
Reporter : Rizki Saleh
Editor : Ismail Gani
Translator : Novita Cahyadi
Kamis, 16 Januari 2014
Ibu Negara juga menegaskan, ia tidak pernah hadir pada sidang kabinet yang dipimpin Presiden SBY. Rapat yang selalu dihadirinya adalah Rapat Paripurna SIKIB yang diselenggarakan satu tahun sekali (Foto: theaustralian.com)

Jakarta (B2B) - Ibu Negara Ani Yudhoyono menegaskan, ia tidak pernah terlibat dalam masalah-masalah pemerintahan dan kabinet selama mendampingi Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY).

"Saya tidak pernah mencampuri urusan kabinet," tegas Ani Yudhoyono dalam rapat paripurna Solidaritas Isteri Kabinet Indonesia Bersatu (SIKIB) II di Istana Negara, Jakarta, Kamis (16/1) seperti dilansir setkab.go.id.

Sebagai istri Presiden, menurut Ani, dirinya hanya mengurus kegiatan Solidaritas Istri Kabinet Indonesia Bersatu (SIKIB).

Ibu Negara juga menegaskan, ia tidak pernah hadir pada sidang kabinet yang dipimpin Presiden SBY. Rapat yang selalu dihadirinya adalah Rapat Paripurna SIKIB yang diselenggarakan satu tahun sekali.

“Jadi, ibu-ibu sekalian yang saya hadiri adalah rapat paripurna SIKIB, bukan sidang kabinet. Saya tidak pernah hadir pada sidang kabinet yang dipimpin Bapak Presiden," kata Ibu Negara dalam rapat yang dihadiri para istri menteri Kabinet Indonesia Bersatu (KIB) I dan II itu.

Ibu Negara mengungkapkan, penegasan itu sengaja disampaikannya untuk menjelaskan kepada publik bahwa dirinya tidak pernah mengurusi persoalan di KIB II.

"Hal ini saya harus sampaikan berulang kali kepada ibu-ibu sekalian, saya tidak pernah mencampuri urusan kabinet. Kabinet dibentuk Bapak Presiden dan yang bertanggung jawab adalah Bapak Presiden. Saya tidak ikut-ikutan dalam masalah itu," tegas Ibu Ani.

Media Australia
Sebelumnya diberitakan seperti dilansir The Australian yang mengungkap alasan pemerintah Australia melakukan aksi mata-mata terhadap Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) dan Ibu Negara Ani Yudhoyono beberapa waktu lalu.

Hanya berselang tiga hari sebelum berlangsungnya kampanye di Australia, kabel diplomatik berstempel ´rahasia´ dikirimkan dari Kedutaan Besar Amerika Serikat (AS) di Jakarta kepada diplomat AS di Canberra dan CIA.

Kabel itu membicarakan dinamika baru peta politik Indonesia. Para intelijen ini meyakini ada pemain yang menjadi penasihat penting bagi SBY.

Orang tersebut bukan wakil presiden, bukan pula menteri dalam kabinet SBY, tapi istrinya sendiri yakni Ani Yudhoyono.

"Keberadaan Kristiani Herawati telah mengorbankan penasihat kunci lainnya. Ibu negara diduga telah memanfaatkan akses kepada presiden untuk membantu teman-temannya dan menjatuhkan lawannya, termasuk Wakil Presiden (Jusuf) Kalla," tulis kabel tersebut, Minggu (15/12), seperti dikutip dari The Australian.

Informasi tersebut membuat Direktorat Pertahanan Signal dan mata-mata lain yang bertempat di Canberra ingin mengetahui lebih jauh dinamika baru itu.

Mereka menilai Ibu Ani memainkan peran untuk membangun dinasti keluarga dengan memasang Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono sebagai presiden selanjutnya.

Tak hanya itu, sumber di Wikileaks juga menyebutkan, Ani Yudhoyono adalah satu-satunya orang yang mendapat kepercayaan penuh dari presiden dalam menghadapi setiap isu.

"Ibu Ani adalah satu-satunya orang yang Presiden benar-benar bisa percaya pada setiap masalah dan sebagai presiden jalan untuk menuju paruh kedua masa jabatannya, ia semakin bergerak di berbaris dengan istrinya," ungkap Wikileaks.

Harian The Australian juga menyebutkan, Ani sangat berambisi untuk menempatkan Agus Harimurti dan menjadikan ibu negara sebagai capres 2014.

Jabatan itu dilakukan sampai putranya mencapai usia yang cukup sampai dapat dipilih menjadi presiden pada Pemilu 2019.

Wikileaks membeberkan, posisi Ani Yudhoyono sebagai ibu negara membuatnya mudah bergerak bebas di lingkungan istana.

Kondisi itu membuatnya lebih mudah dalam memberikan masukan kepada Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) dalam menghadapi sejumlah masalah.

Menjelang Pemilihan Umum 2009 lalu, salah satu sumber intelijen di sekitar istana melaporkan dengan jelas ada pergeseran kekuasaan yang mengarah ke Ibu Ani.

Kondisi itu membuat penasihat presiden Sudi Silalahi semakin merasa terpinggirkan, ia pun tidak lagi memiliki daya untuk memberikan nasihat atasannya tersebut.

"Sekretaris Kabinet Sudi Silalahi , hampir mundur pada bulan Januari akibat frustrasi dengan dinamika baru di istana," ungkap Wikileaks, Minggu (15/12).

Wikileaks juga ungkap kedekatan Ical-Ani Yudhoyono. Mantan Menteri Koordinator Bidang Kesejahteraan Rakyat, Aburizal Bakrie (Ical) pernah melakukan pendekatan intensif dengan Ibu Negara Ani Yudhoyono pada tahun 2005 lalu. 

Langkah ini dia lakukan setelah di-reshuffle dari jabatannya sebagai Menteri Koordinator Bidang Perekonomian.

Dalam laporan yang dibocorkan Wikileaks, Minggu (15/12), Ical dilaporkan langsung tebar pesona untuk mendapatkan kembali perhatian dari Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono .

Bahkan, pria yang kini menjabat sebagai Ketua Umum Partai Golkar ini semakin tekun melakukan pendekatan dengan Ani dan keluarganya.

"Entah bagaimana (Bakrie) berhasil membalikkan isu bencana aliran lumpur Jawa Timur yang diprakarsai perusahaannya Lapindo Brantas Corporation, dia juga terus meningkat profilnya dalam administrasi kenegaraan," ungkap Wikileaks.

Dalam kawat diplomatik berstempel ´rahasia´ tersebut, mengindikasikan kedekatan Ical dengan ibu negara sempat membuat hubungan antara Wakil Presiden Jusuf Kalla (JK) dengan Ani berada di ujung tanduk.

Bahkan, Ani sempat marah saat JK berseloroh soal agama yang dianut istri SBY ketika bertarung pada Pilpres 2009.

Di saat bersamaan, JK juga menyimpan minat untuk meningkatkan hubungannya dengan Ani, dengan misi mendapat persetujuan dari istri SBY tersebut.

Keputusan ini akan berdampak besar terhadap kelanjutan pasangan SBY-Kalla pada Pemilu 2009.

The Australian juga ungkap strategi SBY raup suara Islam. Para intelijen nampaknya tidak puas melihat sepak terjang Ibu Negara Ani Yudhoyono di lingkaran Istana.

Mereka juga memantau pergerakan Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) saat mengikuti musim kampanye Pemilu 2009. Ketika itu, SBY tengah berjuang untuk dapat kembali menjabat sebagai presiden.

Dilansir The Australian, Minggu (15/12), kala itu Wakil Presiden Jusuf Kalla (JK) coba menyebarkan rumor dengan menyebut Ani Yudhoyono beragama Kristen karena jarang menggunakan kerudung.

Isu tersebut membuat Ani mulai menggunakan busana muslim dalam berbagai kesempatan maupun acara-acara resmi.

Di saat bersamaan, intelijen Australia mulai memperhatikan hubungan antara SBY dengan kelompok Islam untuk mengamankan suara kaum religius.

Meskipun di pemilihan legislatif April 2009, suara dari partai berlatar belakang agama mengalami penurunan dari 38 persen pada 2004 menjadi 28 persen.

Kelompok Islam masih memiliki peranan penting bagi SBY. Terutama dalam menghadapi serangan yang dilancarkan dari kubu JK.

"Yudhoyono tahu pentingnya Islam di Indonesia. Dia (SBY) berupaya meyakinkannya dengan beribadah sebagaimana umat muslim dan telah melaksanakan ibadah haji. Namun, dia melupakan hubungannya dengan partai berazaskan Islam yang bergabung dengan koalisinya, seperti PKS. Di saat bersamaan, dia berada di belakang demi mendukung isu yang terjadi di kalangan umat muslim, termasuk soal Timur Tengah atau mendukung undang-undang antipornografi," tulis kawat diplomatik yang dikirimkan Kedutaan Besar Amerika Serikat di Jakarta.

Akan tetapi, intelijen tidak menemukan SBY dan Ibu Ani memberikan bantuan dana atau dukungan politik bagi kelompok Islam radikal.

Keduanya tetap berkomitmen untuk memerangi ekstremisme dan terorisme, sekaligus mendukung Indonesia menjadi negara sekuler.

"Sejak (PKS) mulai menonjol pada lima tahun lalu (Pemilu 2004), PKS telah berbuat banyak untuk memecah ketakutan terhadap kegelapan di jantung demokrasi Indonesia. Pemimpin partai merupakan pendukung Abu Bakar Ba´asyir, kepala spiritual Jemaah Islamiyah, kelompok teroris yang bertanggung jawab atas pemboman bunuh diri di Bali yang membunuh ratusan jiwa."


Jakarta (B2B) - First Lady Ani Yudhoyono stated here, on Thursday that she has never been involved in the affairs of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyonos administration and cabinet.

"I have never interfered with the affairs of the cabinet," she assured at the state palace during her address at the plenary meeting of the association of wives of cabinet ministers and high ranking officials (SIKIB).

She pointed out that she had also never attended a cabinet meeting, adding that the only meeting that she always attended was the SIKIB meeting that is held annually.

SIKIB operates in social and humanitarian fields based on five pillars namely Indonesia Smart, Indonesia Healthy, Indonesia Green, Indonesia Creative and Indonesia Cares.

At the meeting, the chairperson and coordinators explained the implementation of SIKIB programs.

Before starting the meeting SIKIB members clicked a group photo. First Lady Ani Yudhoyono specially asked for a photo record of the event for posterity, since they will soon end their tenure this year.

President Yudhoyono will end his term as president this year following the presidential election scheduled on July 9. He is not legally permitted to seek reelection because he has held office for two terms.

Australia Wiretapping
ON October 17, 2007, three days into Australia´s federal election campaign, a cable marked "secret" was sent from the US embassy in Jakarta to American diplomats in Canberra and to the CIA. Its contents would set the scene, six years later, for the most contentious aspect of Australia´s spy scandal relating to Indonesia: the targeting of Indonesia´s first lady.

The cable spoke of a "new dynamic" in the power balance at the top of Indonesian politics with the emergence of a player who had become the most influential adviser to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

But this new powerbroker, the cable said, was not the vice-president, nor was it a member of SBY´s inner cabinet. It was the President´s wife, Kristiani Herawati, known in her country as Ibu Ani.

"According to contacts Indonesia´s first lady has expanded her influence with the palace and emerged as the President´s undisputed top adviser," the cable stated. "Kristiani Herawati´s ascendance has apparently come at the expense of other key advisers. The first lady has allegedly leveraged her access to the President to help her friends and disparage her foes, including vice-president (Jusuf) Kalla."

The cable said Ibu Ani was restricting the access of other advisers to the President and that "by strengthening her gatekeeper role, the first lady was able to expose the President to views and policy perspectives of her own choosing".

The views contained in this American cable were shared by Australian intelligence agencies, which had also noted the rise and rise of Indonesia´s first lady. In Western intelligence circles, it was becoming clear that Ibu Ani was no presidential handbag but a fast-rising powerbroker within the government of Australia´s largest and most important neighbour.

Inside the super-secret Defence Signals Directorate and other spy agencies in Canberra, intelligence officials naturally were curious to know more about this new dynamic in Jakarta.

They pondered whether Ibu Ani´s power play was part of a suspected plan to create a family dynasty culminating in her eldest son eventually becoming president. And what was the dynamic between the first lady and the Islamic groups she was wooing to shore up her husband´s political support?

When the decision was taken inside DSD to monitor the phones of President Yudhoyono and his most senior colleagues in the leadership, it was believed there were compelling reasons to also target the E-90 3G mobile handset of Indonesia´s first lady.

"To monitor the thoughts and connections of the President´s closest political adviser is extremely useful," said one well-connected insider who asked not to be named.

"Who is she dealing with financially, who is who in the party, what is its structure and what is Indonesia´s shifting power base? Any intelligence agency would love to have that information."

Yet last month, when documents stolen by rogue US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden showed that in 2009 the DSD had targeted the phones of SBY, Ibu Ani and eight other Indonesian leadership figures, the initial response of many in Indonesia and in Australia was, "Why the first lady?" Even in the distinctly ungentlemanly game of spying, surely this was not cricket? First ladies lived in the shadows of their husbands, smiling demurely in public, supporting charities and rearing children. Tapping their phones would surely produce only shopping lists and cheap cocktail party gossip. It must have been a step too far, an arrogant overreach from a country whose spy agencies seemed out of control.

SBY seemed to agree that monitoring his wife´s phone was a step too far, given the white-hot anger that radiated from his initial tweets after the news broke.

"He does take things personally, and nothing is more personal than a man´s wife," explained The Jakarta Post´s editor-in-chief Meidyatama Suryodiningrat.

But Inquirer understands that intelligence agencies believed there were clear national security reasons to justify the targeting of Indonesia´s first lady. The decision to monitor her phone was deliberate and calculated, and was not based on a flippant notion that the DSD should try to listen in simply because it could.

The decision to try to eavesdrop also was not based simply on the fact SBY at times used his wife´s phone instead of his own.

The nature of the power-sharing relationship between SBY and Ibu Ani made it inevitable that once the DSD had decided it was in Australia´s national interests to target the President´s phone, it followed that Ibu Ani´s phone would also be targeted.

The Prime Minister´s office refused to comment on this story, saying it does not comment on intelligence matters.

Several factors appear to have led the DSD, now known as the Australian Signals Directorate, to take a keen interest in Ibu Ani in 2009. When SBY began his first five-year presidential term in 2004, US diplomats assessed that his wife´s voice was "only one of the many" he listened to during his "lengthy deliberations on matters of state."

But this began to change during the course of that first term.

Ibu Ani was born not into politics but into military royalty: she is the daughter of Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, a lieutenant general who was head of Indonesia´s special forces during the bloody anti-communist crackdown in the mid-1960s.

She studied medicine at university but in 1976 dropped out to marry SBY, who was a young military officer and whose rise would benefit greatly from her family´s blue-blood military contacts.

From early on in SBY´s political career, Ibu Ani played an active role in campaigning on his behalf. She graduated in political science in 1998 and in 2004 was appointed vice-chairman of SBY´s Democratic Party.

The problem for intelligence agencies seeking to learn more about SBY´s innermost thoughts was that he was a solitary figure who rarely confided even in close colleagues. This trend became apparent during his first term, increasing his reliance on his wife as a trusted political confidante.

As one expert put it: "In public they have a very regal style of presidency. (In private) they read the papers together in the morning, they are happy and sad together, they are face-to-face people who confide in each other."

By October 2007, the Americans noted in their secret cable, later disclosed by WikiLeaks: "Ibu Ani was the only person the President could truly trust on every issue and as the President moved into the second half of his term, he was increasingly moving in lockstep with his wife.

"According to Yahya Asagaf, a political appointee at the State Intelligence Agency (BIN), it was also becoming more obvious that the first lady´s opinion was ´the only one that matters´."

During 2009, Australian intelligence agencies were trying to unravel Ibu Ani´s role in what they believed was a complex presidential succession plan to ensure that her family retained the presidency beyond the constitutional limit of two five-year terms, which would expire for SBY in 2014.

Ibu Ani has always held high ambitions for her eldest son, Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, now a 35-year-old Harvard-educated military officer. Insiders say that in 2009 the President and his wife were toying with a plan to try to install her as president in 2014 to hold the position until their son was old enough to have a serious run at the presidency in 2019.
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