JakartaPost/Tempo-Jan 13, 2025
President Prabowo Subianto plans to hold another military-style retreat for all the regional heads who were elected into office in the November 2024 regional election. Coordinating Law, Human Rights, Immigration and Correctional Services Minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra said that the planned retreat would be a forum for President Prabowo to brief the local heads on his agenda and how to implement it at the local level. “All the [new] local heads will gather so that they will have the same perception on how to deal with problems currently faced by the government,” Yusril said, as quoted by Tempo over the weekend. With regard to the timing of the event, Yusril said that it would take place only after the Constitutional Court issued the final rulings on election disputes filed by political candidates running in the regional polls. The court begun hearing election disputes late last week and is scheduled to wrap up the process in mid-February. Yusril said that President Prabowo had not yet settled on the site for the retreat but Magelang, a city in Central Java where a military academy is located, would likely again host the event. In October last year, Prabowo took his cabinet members on a three-day retreat at the Magelang military academy, where they slept in tents and took part in a military-style parade and team-building exercises. Such an excursion is not new for Prabowo and reflects his leadership style. His Gerindra Party has often organized similar events at Prabowo’s spacious Hambalang estate in West Java. Gerindra’s most recent retreat before Prabowo’s inauguration was held in September to prepare elected House of Representatives members to be sworn in. Responding to the plan, the newly elected Governor of Jakarta Pramono Anung Wibowo, a politician with the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) said he would join the event. Read more at: