Yudhoyono invited coalition partners on Thursday night


President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono met with leaders of coalition parties on Thursday night in order to mend relations between the parties and the government.

At the meeting the President formed a Coalition Parties Forum he directly chaired.

“I has been appointed to be in charge of the forum's daily activities,” Golkar Party chairman Aburizal Bakrie, who alto attended the meeting, said in Semarang as quoted by tempointeraktif.com on Friday.

Aburizal explained that there were several agreements reached during the meeting and one of them was about a different coalition concept.

If previously the coalition parties were asked only to help safeguard the government policies, in the new concept they will be asked to participate in setting the policies, he said. “They will be involved from the planning stage,” he said.

The President, Aburizal said, also explained that the forum was not intended to unify the coalition parties' opinions, but simply to deal only with crucial problems, which require common supports.