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View all search resultsPrabowo’s push for binding state policy guidelines causes alarm
President Prabowo Subianto has called for the revival of the now-defunct state policy guidelines to be made binding on all institutions, a move experts warn is incompatible with the country’s post-Reform constitutional system.
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President Prabowo Subianto makes a gesture of greeting to members of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) on Aug. 15, 2025, as he mounts the stage to delivers his first State of the Nation Address at the Senayan Legislative Complex in Central Jakarta. (AFP/Pool/Bay Ismoyo)
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resident Prabowo Subianto has called for the revival of the now-defunct state policy guidelines to be made binding on all institutions, a move analysts regard as incompatible with the country’s post-Reform constitutional system.
The President’s suggestion has revived a long-running debate over restoring the authoritarian New Order-style policy guidelines, with proposals to bring them back resurfacing repeatedly in the past few years around the time of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) annual plenary sessions in August.
The fresh draft of the proposed state policy outlines (PPHN), a long-term national development framework intended to guide policymaking across successive presidential administrations, was presented by MPR leaders to Prabowo behind closed doors early this week at the State Palace.
"The President has welcomed the PPHN concept and hopes it can soon become a legal objective,” MPR speaker Ahmad Muzani, who is also a politician of Prabowo’s own Gerindra Party, told reporters on Wednesday. “[He] also asked us to ensure that this objective can be binding on all state institutions.”
Prabowo, according to Muzani, also paid significant attention to what he described as the high costs of democracy, particularly in regional elections, saying the current system often leads to elected governors, regents and mayors being implicated in corruption cases.
The PPHN are widely seen as successors to the now-defunct state policy guidelines (GBHN) used during former president Suharto's authoritarian New Order era, when the MPR was the country's highest state institution and set broad policy directions for the sitting president to implement.
The GBHN was abolished after Indonesia amended the Constitution following the 1998 Reform movement, which introduced direct presidential elections and shifted development planning to the executive power.
