The Jakarta Post
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 resultsLet's win the WHO race
To win the WHO's top post, Jakarta must stop treating multilateral diplomacy as an afterthought and let the President lead the charge for Indonesia’s nominee, Budi Gunadi Sadikin.
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!
Set as preferred source
Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin speaks on April 20, 2026, during a meeting with House of Representatives Commission IX overseeing health and social welfare at the Senayan Legislative Complex in Central Jakarta. (Antara/Asprilla Dwi Adha)
D
rawing lessons from the diplomatic triumphs of other nations and our own past failures to secure leadership at United Nations agencies, President Prabowo Subianto should personally take charge of efforts to help Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin win the World Health Organization director general election.
Granted, the Foreign Ministry’s attention is currently fixed on securing a fifth nonpermanent seat on the UN Security Council for 2029-2030. But with voting set for the World Health Assembly in 2027, the ministry has time on its side. Indonesia has already served four two-year stints on the council, in 1973-1974, 1995-1996, 2007-2008 and 2019-2020, culminating in its council presidency in August 2020.
Strategic though another council seat may be, the WHO helm is a far rarer, more urgent prize; one that has eluded Indonesia.
Before beginning any global campaign, however, Prabowo must dispel domestic speculation that Budi’s nomination is a graceful exit strategy, an orchestrated kick upstairs to appease medical associations that resented his top-down reforms that bypassed traditional gatekeepers. The administration must project clarity: Prabowo is backing Budi because he genuinely belongs at the head of the UN health agency.
The WHO needs an administrator of Budi’s mold, precisely because he is not a physician. Trained in nuclear physics at the Bandung Institute of Technology but spending most of his career as a banker, he brought technocratic discipline to the Health Ministry, opening it to greater transparency and loosening the grip of entrenched medical cartels.
When COVID-19 battered the nation, then-president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo tapped Budi, his deputy state-owned enterprises minister, in December 2020 to take over the public health portfolio from Terawan Agus Putranto.
Budi’s corporate background proved decisive. Moving swiftly to curb the contagion, he accelerated vaccine procurement across Beijing and Western capitals. Under his stewardship, Indonesia turned a looming disaster into what was widely praised internationally as a benchmark pandemic response.
