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View all search resultsEvery hour counts: Mobilizing national capacity for disaster response
The President must declare the Sumatra floods and landslides a national disaster so the state can mobilize its vast emergency response apparatus and afterward, learn crucial lessons from this incident for future policies and actions.
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![Volunteers ready packages of relief aid for flood-affected areas on [DATE], at the Sidoarjo Disaster Mitigation Agency in East Java.](https://img.jakpost.net/c/2025/12/06/2025_12_06_169905_1764954727._large.jpg)
Volunteers ready packages of relief aid for flood-affected areas on [DATE], at the Sidoarjo Disaster Mitigation Agency in East Java. (AFP/Juni Kriswanto)
T
he Jakarta Post editorial “It is a national disaster” (Dec. 4, 2025) is a stark warning to President Prabowo Subianto, urging him to reassess the status of the massive floods in Sumatra. The piece underscores a critical reality: Local administrations in North Sumatra, West Sumatra and Aceh are overwhelmed, and lack the capacity to manage the devastating impact without decisive intervention from the central government.
Under Law No. 24/2007 on disaster management and Government Regulation No. 21/2008, the country’s president has a robust legal mandate to declare a national state of emergency. This authority empowers full national mobilization to confront a catastrophe that has paralyzed provincial administrations and inflicted severe humanitarian suffering.
President Prabowo Subianto convened a limited cabinet meeting on Saturday at his residence in Hambalang, Bogor, West Java, focusing on updated reports from the ground, specifically regarding isolated regions affected by floods and landslides. The President prioritized the restoration of overland access and the acceleration of logistics distribution, particularly fuel supplies, without declaring a national disaster.
Conditions in North Sumatra, West Sumatra and Aceh clearly meet the criteria outlined in Article 7 of the Disaster Management Law. The massive scale of casualties, property loss, infrastructure collapse, geographical spread and profound socioeconomic paralysis collectively justify elevating the disaster’s formal status from a "national priority" to a national emergency.
The Golkar Party, a key ally in Prabowo’s ruling coalition, and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the only de facto opposition, have joined the chorus of public pressure urging the government to declare the calamity a national disaster.
For the President, declaring a national disaster is not mere bureaucratic formality, but a constitutional duty and a moral obligation. Doing so will activate the full spectrum of national response mechanisms, from military and police deployment to volunteer coordination, logistics support and accelerated rehabilitation, ensuring that the state fulfills its mandate to safeguard lives and restore dignity to affected communities.
Mobilizing national capacity requires a two-stage strategy.
![Volunteers ready packages of relief aid for flood-affected areas on [DATE], at the Sidoarjo Disaster Mitigation Agency in East Java.](https://img.jakpost.net/c/2025/12/06/2025_12_06_169905_1764954727._medium.jpg)
