Why Indonesia cannot afford to scrap Prabowo’s free meals programme

Indonesia has vowed to overhaul the country’s ambitious free nutritious meals programme following public pressure and recent allegations of corruption – a move analysts described as a “moderate” concession in lieu of an “embarrassing” discontinuation of President Prabowo Subianto’s flagship initiative. The US$15 billion initiative aims to reach 83 million schoolchildren, pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers, and toddlers to prevent malnutrition and stunted growth. However, it has been dogged by controversy since its launch in January last year, with critics pointing to weak oversight, limited budget transparency and insufficient food safety guidance. Earlier this month, three former leaders of the National Nutrition Agency (BGN), which oversees the initiative, were arrested by the Attorney General’s Office for alleged mark-ups and corruption related to the development of operational kitchens. Last week, Coordinating Minister for Food Affairs Zulkifli Hasan revealed that the number of kitchens had surged to 27,877 – more than the 21,000 planned initially. “Our main focus is on underdeveloped, frontier and outermost regions. According to the data, there should be 2,000 service points in these regions, but this number has ballooned to 8,617,” Zulkifli told reporters on June 11. As each kitchen was given a daily state incentive of six million rupiah (US$340), Zulkifli calculated that the unauthorised operations caused “budget waste of more than one trillion rupiah per month”. Public pressure has intensified alongside these budgetary and management mishap concerns. In the past few days, students have taken to the streets in several cities to demand an end to the programme, which they say is one of the many causes of “Indonesia’s bankruptcy”. “Wasteful spending on free meals has led to a fiscal situation where subsidies initially provided [to the public] had been withdrawn,” protester Rafael Arreva told Reuters on Friday. Jakarta said that it would not halt the free meals scheme, but would recalculate its budget, which is 268 trillion rupiah (US$15 billion) this year, down from the initial 335 trillion rupiah. “There are clusters that we really need to reorganise and improve, including immediately prioritising the underdeveloped, frontier and outermost regions so that they can quickly benefit from the programme,” State Secretary Minister Prasetyo Hadi said on Thursday. During the evaluation period, construction of new kitchens will be stopped temporarily. The programme’s beneficiaries would also no longer be student-centric, aiming to reach more pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and toddlers, he said. ‘Moderate’ concession The restructuring underlines how Jakarta listens to criticism but is unwilling to stop the programme altogether due to it being Prabowo’s signature campaign promise, according to analysts. “This is a form of moderate [concession], caused by harsh criticism and the corruption cases that have been revealed,” said Jaya Darmawan, a researcher with think tank Centre of Economic and Law Studies. “There is indeed a public perception that Prabowo will be embarrassed or suffer negative consequences if the programme is stopped completely because this is his political promise.” Riant Nugroho, chairman at the Indonesian Public Policy Society, welcomed the reorganisation, but said evaluation should also be carried out by “an independent team of experts, including statisticians, methodologists and policy experts”. “The evaluation team must be truly reliable and the results must be communicated to the public effectively to prevent new hatreds or mistrust.” The new focus on underdeveloped and remote regions should not come at the expense of poor schools in big islands such as Java, he added. To improve the nutritional needs of pregnant women and toddlers, the government should reinvigorate the existing Integrated Health Posts, or Posyandu, across the country instead of “reinventing the wheel”, Riant said. “Posyandus are already spread throughout Indonesia, though now their effectiveness is declining due to dwindling community participation. However, if the Posyandu budget were [increased] to meet the nutritional needs of pregnant women, that would be a great idea,” he said. Temporary halt Diah Saminarsih, chief executive at the Centre for Indonesia’s Strategic Development Initiative, urged the government to temporarily stop the initiative to allow for a “measurable and science-based evaluation”. “I don’t know why [Prabowo] is so concerned about the moratorium on this programme. If the goal is improvement, you go to extreme lengths to ensure you can correct the programme and then roll it back out the way it should be to meet the standards,” she said. “I would argue that, precisely because it’s the president’s priority, shouldn’t it be done as well as possible? The leaders [of BGN] have been arrested on suspicion of corruption, can we not suspect that corruption is also occurring elsewhere?” A 30-day moratorium would allow for a thorough audit, said Agus Sarwono, a researcher with corruption watchdog Transparency International Indonesia. “To this day, we have not found the audit results from the financial supervisory agencies about the free meals programme. Audits must be conducted periodically because this programme involves daily transactions,” he said. “If a car breaks down, it should go to a repair shop first. You can’t fix it on the go. What we demand is a moratorium on all kitchen operations to fix everything, strengthen oversight, and improve selection of its beneficiaries.” On Saturday, Muhammad Qodari, head of the government’s communication agency, insisted that the scheme would continue running during the evaluation. “Any programme inevitably experiences dynamics at the operational level. Only the dead are without problems. As long as we’re alive, we’ll have problems. Those problems shouldn’t stop us or make us back down. We should therefore evaluate it,” he said.

Why Indonesia cannot afford to scrap Prabowo’s free meals programme

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}As it was Prabowo’s signature campaign promise, dropping the programme could prove ‘embarrassing’ to the president, experts say

As it was Prabowo’s signature campaign promise, dropping the programme could prove ‘embarrassing’ to the president, experts say