Analysts say Prabowo's team lacks the skills for the job

Indonesia's government has a competence problem, according to The Diplomat: many senior officials have no background in the work they now oversee. The magazine argues that Prabowo's cabinet, known as the "Red and White Cabinet," was built more on loyalty than on skill, and that an anti-expertise attitude now runs through much of the government.

The sharpest example is the National Nutrition Agency, which runs the huge free-meals program. None of its top leaders is trained in nutrition or food safety. One is an entomologist, a scientist who studies insects; another is a former journalist; two more are retired generals, from the army and the police. The Diplomat says this pattern repeats across ministries, where posts often go to political allies rather than people who know the field.

The government's own fix is itself a warning sign, the article says. To cover the missing knowledge, it has created a wave of new deputy-minister jobs, adding layers of officials instead of picking qualified ministers in the first place. The result is messy government: some new ministers reportedly did not even know where their offices were, and the growing presence of military officers in civilian roles adds more confusion.

Why it matters

When the people running schools, health, or food programs do not understand them, plans are more likely to be slow, wasteful, or badly designed, and ordinary Indonesians feel that in the services they receive. Loyalty-first appointments also make mistakes harder to fix, because few insiders have the knowledge to spot them. Watch whether ministries deliver on big promises like free meals, or stumble on the basics.