More than half the board of governors of Indonesia's central bank have announced their resignations, saying they found it impossible to carry out their work because of a lack of support.
In a statement the five members -- who included acting Bank Indonesia governor Anwar Nasution -- said they lacked "political support from the government, the DPR (the house of representatives) and the public."
They said their time had been consumed by the slow settling of disputes over trillions of rupiah in liquidity credits which Bank Indonesia extended to failing banks at the height of the regional financial crisis in 1997.
"We have lost legitimacy, which makes it very difficult to carry out our task at Bank Indonesia," their statement, released late Friday, said.
All said they would stay on in their posts until their successors to the eight-member board had been installed.
The shock resignations came a day after the government failed to reach an agreement with the central bank on their respective shares of the burden of billions of dollars in the disputed emergency loans given to the failing banks during the crisis.
But later Indonesia's coordinating economic minister Rizal Ramli announced that an accord had been reached.
"We have agreed that Bank Indonesia will bear only 24 trillion rupiah (2.6 billion dollars) of the disputed 144.5 trillion rupiah in disputed liquidity loans," Ramli was quoted by the Jakarta Post as telling reporters.
Ramli said Bank Indonesia would issue bonds of that amount to the government.
The minister also said, without specifying names, that the government would seek legal action against Bank Indonesia officials over the disbursement of the liquidity credits.
"We are asking the Attorney General to take legal action against scores of BI directors who deliberately committed self-enrichment" when the funds were disbursed, Ramli said.
He said former presidents B.J. Habibie and Suharto were also partly responsible at the "strategic policy" level of the liquidity credits fiasco.
Nasution was asked by reporters after a hearing at parliament late Friday night why all members of the board of governors had not resigned together.
"Different people have different thoughts," he said.
"Some members of the board of governors resigned because of their moral responsibility (for the credits fiasco), which is a positive thing, not because they have stolen anything," he said.
The pressure on the central bank board followed an audit by the Supreme Audit Board which issued findings in April showing that the 2.6 billion dollars of loans had been issued without following appropriate procedures.
Ramli, who was appointed to the government's top economic spot in August, said in a statement received by AFP Saturday, that the audit had also found "lack of sound governance" and "insufficient bank supervision."
Pressed again why the resignations were not unanimous, Nasution said: "This proves there was no pressure," from the government.
But the Jakarta Post on Saturday quoted some analysts as seeing intervention by the government of President Abdurrahman, and others the hand of Wahid himself.
Earlier on Friday Wahid had told palace reporters that he had sent a letter to the lower house of parliament (DPR) requesting the replacement of Bank Indonesia's board of governors, but that he had received no reply.
Indonesia's central bank extended liquidity credits to banks on an emergency basis when the 1997 financial crisis began toppling the banking system. But scores of banks were later found to have misused the credits, some to prop up affiliates -- JAKARTA (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
