We can only hope that Megawati will prove the skeptics wrong and that President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo made the right decision. For sure, having the paramount leader of the ruling party control the BRIN risks politicization of science, which is unacceptable in a democracy.

Jokowi, however, insists that Megawati is the right person for the job, regardless of public suspicion that he simply wanted to please her. Megawati is said to be obsessed with science as a “reprisal” for her failure to complete her study at university.

President Jokowi dissolved the Research and Technology Ministry in April this year to consolidate the power of the BRIN, which Jokowi established in 2019 upon the advice of, among others, Megawati. The new agency now supervises the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), the National Nuclear Agency (BATAN), the Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology and the National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN).

For many, it does not make any sense at all that President Jokowi promoted Megawati, a senior high school graduate, to such a powerful position in a scientific agency. Megawati, who chairs the country’s largest political party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), has also been entrusted by the President to head the steering committee of the Agency for Pancasila Ideology Education (BPIP).

It is exactly because of her limited education that many look down on Megawati, who at the BRIN’s steering committee is assisted by prominent intellectuals, including Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati. Underestimating Megawati was perhaps one of the mistakes Soeharto had regretted so that he sought every path to keep her away from her people.

Megawati's failure to complete her studies at Padjajaran University's School of Agriculture in Bandung and at the University of Indonesia's School of Psychology in the 1960s apparently remains hurtful for her. She dropped out from the two prominent universities not through her own fault, but because Soeharto had made life extremely difficult for her and her four siblings after he took over from their father Sukarno as president in 1966. Only Sukarno’s eldest son Guntur Soekarnoputra was able to finish his higher education at the Bandung Institute of Technology in 1966.

“When I was not allowed to study due to the political situation at the time, my father just said this, ”It’s alright, you can find knowledge anywhere,” Megawati once recalled.

In June, Megawati received an honorary professor title from the Indonesia Defense University. She is also the recipient of nine honorary doctorate titles, including from Japan's prestigious Waseda University.

But whatever people say about her, Megawati has proven since 1999 to have led the PDI-P as one of the country’s most powerful political parties, if not the most, with support from die-hard followers.

Leading the BRIN is a huge challenge for the 74-year-old politician. Only time will tell whether her obsession for science will bring tremendous progress or disaster to the country’s research and sciences.

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