The speech, titled Indonesia’s Call for Hope, was a rhetorical, grammatical, logical and diplomatic letdown. Despite having ample time and resources to craft a powerful address for one of the year’s most important diplomatic events, Prabowo was forced to deliver an amateurish and dangerously naive speech.

To be fair, diplomatic speeches at the UN often walk a careful line. Prabowo’s speech did attempt to strike an optimistic and unifying tone, and his references to peacekeeping contributions, food security and climate action were not without merit. However, these were ultimately overshadowed by poor judgment, rhetorical incoherence and a dangerous failure to confront pressing realities, especially when speaking on behalf of a nation with Indonesia’s moral and geopolitical weight.

Ironically, Prabowo himself delivered the speech with energy, clarity and conviction, far better than many Indonesian leaders since Soekarno’s legendary 1960 UN address. However, his confident delivery only highlighted the speech’s incoherence, contradictions and shallowness, making him appear foolish for speaking so strongly on a fundamentally flawed message. 

The tragedy is that Indonesia has world-class diplomats and thinkers, such as Marty Natalegawa, Dino Patti Djalal and Thomas Lembong, whose strategic and eloquent voices could have shaped a speech worthy of a G20 nation and the world’s largest Muslim-majority country. Yet none seem to have been involved.

Structurally, the speech lacks focus and coherence. It opens with a long, ceremonial salutation, more appropriate for domestic occasions, then abruptly shifts to quoting Western revolutionary ideals like the US Declaration of Independence. From there, it jumps erratically among topics, from human rights, climate change, food security, to Indonesia’s rice production and the Middle East conflict, without a clear thematic anchor or logical progression. 

The speech’s greatest failure is its handling of the urgent and morally clear crisis in Gaza. Although Prabowo mentions the word “genocide,” he carefully avoids naming Israel, the perpetrator, or its main backer, the United States. This is a failure of courage, not diplomacy. A leader representing 274 million people, most of whom strongly support Palestine, should boldly confront the grim reality in Gaza.