May 15, 2024
JAKARTA – Golkar Party chair Airlangga Hartarto denied reports of a fight for cabinet seats between members of president-elect Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, especially his part with the National Mandate Party (PAN).
Prabowo, who will be sworn into office in October to succeed outgoing President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, has begun discussing the makeup of his cabinet with leaders of political parties in his ever-growing coalition.
His coalition, dubbed the Indonesia Onward Coalition (KIM), initially comprised four parties: his own Gerindra Party, the Golkar Party, PAN and the Democratic Party. But the president-elect recently welcomed two new additions to the fold, namely the NasDem Party and the National Awakening Party (PKB), which both backed rival candidate Anies Baswedan in this year’s election.
Reports recently emerged that Golkar’s Airlangga and PAN chair Zulkifli Hasan were contending for the energy and mineral resources ministerial seat.
Airlangga is currently holding the position of coordinating economic minister in Jokowi’s administration, while Zulkifli is the incumbent trade minister. Meanwhile, the energy and mineral resources ministerial spot is filled by technocrat Arifin Tasrif.
But Airlangga denied the rumor of a squabble with PAN. “That’s not [true], nobody is fighting over [cabinet seats],” he said on Saturday, as quoted by tempo.co.
Read also: Prabowo in early bind as backers vie for spoils
As talks on cabinet posts unfold, observers have pinpointed three posts that would be highly contested by the parties: the positions of environment and forestry, agrarian and spatial planning and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) ministers.
These ministries are widely considered to be lahan basah (fertile land), a term for institutions that oversee major projects with significant budget allocations, a mixture that has often led to corruption and extortion in the past.
Separately, Golkar executive Dave Laksono said on Sunday that the party did not have a preference on the cabinet posts, noting that the line-up was the president-elect’s prerogative.
“We’ll follow the directives from the president-elect. He understands more where best to position [Golkar members],” he said.
Meanwhile, PAN made its own attempt to woo Prabowo into giving the party more cabinet seats during its recent national coordinating meeting on April 16, which the president-elect attended.
Upon leading a prayer to kick off the meeting, senior PAN official Saleh Partaonan Daulay jokingly said that the party would be “thankful if the [mandate] given to us is more than we expected”.
Prabowo applauded Saleh’s comment, saying that it was “both creative and political”.
Zulkifli and several PAN members met with Jokowi at the State Palace on Friday, although the party chair denied that the meeting was related to Prabowo’s cabinet line-up, as reported by kompas.com.
Read also: The more, the merrier: Prabowo’s coalition backs plan for bigger cabinet
While details remain unclear on how Prabowo will divvy up his cabinet, a proposal to increase the number of ministries from 34 to 41 has recently been gaining traction within the president-elect’s coalition.
Gerindra, Golkar and the Democrats have endorsed the move, arguing that more cabinet ministers would help the country address its many issues.
However, a revision to the 2008 Ministry Law would be necessary to make sure the plan could go ahead. The current version of the law limits the number of ministries in a presidential cabinet to 34.
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives Legislation Body (Baleg) held a meeting to hear its expert team’s report regarding the revision of the law.