Indonesia's Bakrie to remain active in politics

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia's chief welfare minister, Aburizal Bakrie, is not looking for a cabinet post in the administration that will take office after 2009 polls but will remain active in politics, his spokesman said on Monday.

Bakrie, a controversial tycoon considered one of the most powerful politicians in Indonesia's Golkar party, was a key financial backer of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's 2004 presidential campaign.

Yudhoyono has announced he will seek a second term in 2009.

Bakrie was ranked as Indonesia's richest man, worth $5.4 billion, by Forbes Asia late last year, although his family's businesses have since been battered by the global financial crisis.

With the Bakrie conglomerate facing severe debt problems, worsened by the plummeting rupiah, Bakrie-linked stocks have been tanking, prompting authorities to suspend their shares and even close the Jakarta bourse for three days last month.

Bakrie would not resign from his current post but "did not intend to be a minister in the new cabinet", spokesman Lalu Mara Satriawangsa said.

"That doesn't mean he will quit politics," Satriawangsa said.

Satriawangsa said Bakrie also did not plan to stand for president or vice president, but would remain in politics through Golkar, the main party in the ruling coalition.

Bakrie is a member of the advisory board of Golkar, once the political vehicle of Indonesia's long-time strongman president Suharto, who left office in 1998 and died earlier this year.