Sukiman Cabinet. He was a critic of the cabinet's economic policies, writing in a June 1951 pamphlet that economic decline from the government's policies was "only temporarily hidden by the pseudo-welfare of high export prices". During 1951, the Indonesian government had been negotiating war reparations with the Japanese government as part of the Treaty of San Francisco. The government of Sukiman had intended to sign the multilateral agreement in order to improve relations with the United States and the democratic camp of the Cold War on top of receiving reparations and economic benefits. While Wibisono supported the position, Sjafruddin and Natsir opposed it: Sjafruddin argued that a bilateral agreement would suffice as Indonesia had never been formally at war with Japan and could receive economic benefits and reparations without signing the treaty. Despite the opposition, after heated discussions, Sukiman's position prevailed. In 1952, Masyumi split between modernist and traditional politicians, the party remaining under modernist politicians such as Sjafruddin and Natsir, while more traditional Islamist members broke off and merged into Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). Bank Indonesia governor On 30 April 1951, the Indonesian government nationalized the Bank of Java, and converted it from a joint-stock company into a public body. Sjafruddin opposed this on the grounds that the bank's Indonesian personnel were too inexperienced to manage it. Despite this, on 15 July he was appointed as the inaugural governor of the central bank, later renamed Bank Indonesia (BI), to replace the previous resigning governor A. Houwink. Sjafruddin was initially reluctant to take up the post, having planned to retire from public life and enter the private sector to earn enough for his children's education. As he did not want to earn money through abuse of office, he accepted the post under the condition that his salary and that of other Indonesian employees in the bank would be the same as that of the Dutch staff. Sjafruddin's economic and monetary policy views, such as his opposition to the nationalization of the bank, were similar to the views of the outgoing Dutch administrators, and according to Sjafruddin, Houwink approved of his appointment. In BI's first annual report, Sjafruddin argued for the bank to continue commercial banking activities, citing a shortage of access to banking systems and the lack of a capital market in Indonesia at that time. In designing BI's statutes, Sjafruddin included a clause which would manage the bank's reserves of