Prabowo's Loyalist Cabinet Degrades Indonesian Governance
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- Sugiono, Indonesia's foreign minister with a computer science degree and no diplomatic training, oversaw a November 2024 joint statement with China that acknowledged "joint development in areas of overlapping claims" in the South China Sea — breaking Indonesia's long-standing status as a "non-claimant" state.
- Sugiono also left ambassadorial posts in friendly countries and at the UN vacant for months in mid-2025, and delayed accepting new ambassadors' credentials in mid-2026 until former deputy foreign minister Dino Patti Djalal publicly criticized the delay.
- Raja Juli Antoni, the forestry minister with a Political Science PhD and no forestry background, presided over continued liberal issuance of forest management permits during the 2025 northern Sumatra floods and landslides — attributed to deforestation on company concession lands — that killed 1,000+ people and displaced over 1 million.
- The National Nutrition Agency (BGN), running Prabowo's flagship free school meals program, is led by officials with no nutrition background — an entomologist, a journalist, and two retired security generals; three of four leaders were arrested for corruption in mid-2026 amid weekly mass food poisoning reports.
- Prabowo's appointees cluster around personal loyalty networks: Sugiono received a Prabowo scholarship since high school and served as his personal secretary; Dadan Hindayana met Prabowo as a plant disease expert; and multiple Taruna Nusantara alumni — Sugiono, Prasetyo Hadi, and Cabinet Secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya — hold top posts.
- The cabinet includes 4 ministers, 5 deputy ministers, 1 agency head, and 5 special advisors who are retired military officers; Prabowo revised the cabinet secretary position to bypass the bar on active-duty military officers so Teddy Indra Wijaya could hold it, while the number of deputy ministers has nearly tripled from 19 to 54.
Why it matters: The article documents concrete governance damage from loyalty-based appointments: 1,000+ deaths in Sumatra floods linked to unchecked deforestation under a forestry minister with no forestry training, weekly food poisoning from a nutrition agency led by an entomologist and two retired generals, and Indonesia's first-ever acknowledgment of South China Sea overlapping claims with China under a foreign minister with a computer science degree. Three BGN leaders were arrested for corruption in mid-2026 alone.
