Indonesia’s newly-appointed cabinet entered a military team-building retreat in Central Java province on Friday, which President Prabowo Subianto described as a means of instilling discipline and shared purpose among the leading members of his administration.
Described by Reuters as an “unconventional bonding exercise” and by the Jakarta Post as a “four-day semi-military retreat,” the exercise took place at the National Military Academy of Indonesia in the city of Magelang. It involved more than 100 members of his new Red and White Cabinet, the largest since the 1960s.
As Reuters reported, “ministers and their deputies donned caps and camouflage outfits,” and took part in coordinated stretches and marches, while listening to briefings from the Indonesian leader. The ministers will sleep in air-conditioned tents for the duration of the retreat, which comes to a close today.
In his opening remarks at the retreat on Friday, the 73-year-old former general, who was sworn into office on October 20, said that the goal was to instill in his Cabinet “the Military Way,” state news agency Antara reported. “We must move in sync with the same goal. The government does not work alone, we have to work as a team,” Prabowo said.
“I’m not here to make you militaristic, that’s a concept,” Prabowo added. “Many governments and corporations have adopted the Military Way. The core values are discipline and loyalty, not to me, but to the Indonesian nation and people.”
Prabowo’s office also shared a number of images from the retreat, including images of ministers in military fatigues, standing in lines and lunging forward during stretching exercises. Another set of photos shows the cabinet wearing blue tracksuits, performing a similar set of exercises and posing for photos on the parade ground.
The mood at the retreat does appear to have been relatively light. Many ministers and deputy ministers posted photos from the training camp, showing them laughing.
Erick Thohir, the state-owned enterprises minister, posted videos on social media of the cabinet members arriving on a military plane and after arrival, Voice of America reported. “Learning to create content from the experts,” he wrote on Instagram, alongside a photo of himself laughing with other ministers.
While Prabowo is not the first Indonesian president to have a military background – his one-time father-in-law Suharto was also a military man, as was Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono – he is the first to press his cabinet into training fatigues and assemble them on a literal military parade ground.
The exercise is clearly intended to bond together the sprawling Red and White Cabinet, which makes up a diverse but slightly unwieldy cross section of Indonesia’s political elite. Among its 48 ministers and their 56 deputies are garden variety politicians, technocrats, former military officials and religious leaders. The cabinet also includes a human rights activist who was abducted by the military in 1998, allegedly on Prabowo’s orders, while calling for the resignation of Suharto.
It is certainly striking that Prabowo has chosen to inaugurate his five-year term in such a regimented manner. Whether this tells us anything that we don’t already know about Prabowo’s likely governing style remains unclear.