A new presidential regulation allowing active military personnel to assume key institutional and supervisory roles has elicited a mixed response from observers. 

The regulation in question is Presidential Regulation No. 37/2019 on functional positions for TNI personnel. Signed recently by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, it stipulates that military personnel in organizations outside the military answer to their direct supervisors in the respective organization. In the case of a military official assigned to lead a certain organization, he or she will be subject to the rights and obligations attached to the position. The regulation does not specify which organizations TNI personnel may be assigned to.

Expertise-based assignment aims to place military personnel in strategic positions overseeing regional, national or global affairs or to deploy them to tactical or technical operations.

The positions a TNI member may assume depend on his or her military rank. For instance, “TNI personnel assuming an expert position must have a minimum rank of brigadier general/ commodore/air commodore and a maximum rank of major general/rear admiral/air rear marshal,” as stipulated in Article 7.

Meanwhile, skill-based positions are open for military personnel with the maximum rank of captain to the minimum rank of second sergeant to guide, oversee and implement technical operations based on a certain field of expertise.

Centre for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) security analyst Iis Gindarsah said the new presidential regulation had been issued timely.

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