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Proposal for Jokowi to lead transition team fails to gain traction
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A billboard showing portraits of President Joko “Jokowi“ Widodo (right) and Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto is displayed on March 28, 2024, in front of the Defense Ministry office in Jakarta. (AFP/Yasuyoshi Chiba)
T
he idea to appoint President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo to lead a “transition team" tasked with smoothing out the transfer of power to his successor president-elect Prabowo Subianto has been met with a cold shoulder by Prabowo’s camp.
Prabowo, who ran alongside Jokowi's son Gibran Rakabuming Raka in February’s election, is scheduled to assume office in October, barring any successful challenges to the election results at the Constitutional Court.
The suggestion that Jokowi lead Prabowo's presidential transition team was first touted by a presidential staffer who said that a transition team would be established in the future to ensure that the presidential succession "can go well and can be done in a quick manner".
"God willing [the team] will be directly led by President Jokowi. We're formulating details about the team, including its authority," Ali Mochtar Ngabalin, a lead expert staffer at the Executive Office of the President, told the press on Monday.
Jokowi was the first Indonesian president to introduce the concept of a presidential transition team. When he first came to power in 2014, Jokowi recruited a group of experts and politicians to help him prepare for his incoming presidency and to ensure that his administration could work effectively on its first day in office.
The team, led by former trade minister Rini Soemarno, was tasked with formulating effective spending of the state budget, designing Jokowi's cabinet, drawing up policies based on the president-elect's vision and mission on the campaign trail and examining problems and challenges in various strategic issues.
Read also: Jokowi, Prabowo flaunt warm exchanges amid rift speculation
