TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsCalls grow for Prabowo to end deputy ministers’ dual roles
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
President Prabowo Subianto greets Red and White Cabinet members ahead of a plenary cabinet meeting at the Presidential Office in Jakarta on Jan. 22. (Antara/Hafidz Mubarak A)
P
ressure is mounting on President Prabowo Subianto’s administration to remove more than two dozen deputy ministers from their roles as commissioners of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) after the Constitutional Court maintained its position that cabinet members can not hold dual appointments.
Out of the 56 deputy ministers in Prabowo’s Cabinet, the largest since the Reformasi Era, at least 30 are currently serving in concurrent roles as SOE commissioners.
The latest appointment came earlier this month when Second Deputy Higher Education, Science and Technology Minister Stella Christie was named commissioner at Pertamina Hulu Energi, the upstream subsidiary of state-owned oil and gas giant Pertamina.
Amid mounting concerns that the practice could threaten good governance and undermine anti-corruption efforts, Juhaidy Rizaldy, executive director of Indonesia Law and Democracy Studies (ILDES), filed a legal challenge with the Constitutional Court.
He petitioned the Court to explicitly interpret Article 23 of the 2008 State Ministry Law, which prohibits ministers from serving as SOE commissioners, as also applying to deputy ministers. Juhaidy argued that the Court had already addressed this issue in its 2020 ruling on a 2019 judicial review, where it stated in the judicial opinion that deputy ministers should likewise be subject to the ban on dual office-holding.
Read also: Deputy ministers' double jobs risk govt's performance
The Court ultimately dismissed Juhaidy’s petition as inadmissible, citing the loss of his legal standing following his death on June 22. However, it reaffirmed that its 2020 ruling had “explicitly prohibited deputy ministers from holding dual positions”, a prohibition the government has yet to enforce.
