New Indonesian president swears in country’s largest cabinet since 1966

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Jakarta: Indonesia’s new President Prabowo Subianto swore in on Monday the country’s largest cabinet in decades, with over 100 ministers and deputies that included key economic officials under predecessor Joko Widodo.

Subianto publicly announced the lineup late on Sunday and named it the “Red and White Cabinet,” referring to the colors of the Indonesian flag.

He was sworn in as the country’s eighth president earlier in the morning with Widodo’s eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, as his vice president.

The new cabinet comprises 48 ministers, 56 deputy ministers and five heads of agencies, making it the largest since 1966, when Indonesia’s first President Sukarno formed a lineup of 132 ministerial officials, which was dismissed a month later.

“The cabinet is a combination of professionals with Prabowo’s supporters, and I think Prabowo appointed many of his supporters and inner circles in the cabinet. So that’s why the cabinet is huge,” Dr. Ahmad Rizky Mardhatillah Umar, an Indonesian political researcher at the UK’s Aberystwyth University, told Arab News.

Umar said he expects Prabowo to focus on foreign affairs during his presidency, citing the appointment of Sugiono, a former member of the Indonesian army’s special forces and part of the new leader’s inner circle, as foreign minister.

Sugiono will serve in the role with three deputies: Anis Matta, Arrmanatha Nasir and Arif Havas.

Matta, who was the former leader of the Islamic party PKS and current chairman of the Indonesian Gelora Party, is expected to focus on Indonesia’s engagement with Muslim countries, particularly in the Middle East, according to local media reports.

“Prabowo would focus on foreign affairs while delegating many of his domestic affairs to many key ministries, and especially to the vice president,” Umar said.

“He is eager to play a role in the Middle East and the Muslim world. Anis Matta, with his extensive networks with Islamic movements in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, could help him to achieve this objective.”

Several key ministers from Widodo’s administration were also reappointed to the new cabinet, including Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati and Airlangga Hartarto, the chief economic affairs minister.

Widodo and his cabinet presided over a strong track record on economic growth of about 5 percent every year, except during the COVID-19 pandemic years of 2020 and 2021.

Subianto, who promised to accelerate economic growth to 8 percent during his election campaign, looks set to build on that trajectory.

Indrawati’s reappointment makes her the first person to hold the finance ministry under three different presidents. The 62-year-old previously served as the executive director of the International Monetary Fund and managing director of the World Bank.

She is also expected to oversee Subianto’s other ambitious programs, including an increase in defense spending, hikes in civil servants’ salaries and a program to give free meals for 83 million children.

But some tension is expected within the new cabinet, especially in the early days.

“Given that the cabinet also comprise many of Prabowo’s allies and supporting parties, we could expect that it might be highly dynamic and (filled with) internal politics,” said Umar.