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View all search resultsA ministry restored
With a seasoned diplomat back at the helm, Prabowo has restored the Foreign Ministry from a cleanup crew into an engine room.
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President Prabowo Subianto (right) congratulates Foreign Minister Arrmanatha Nasir on Oct. 1, 2026, following the mass inauguration of newly appointed state officials at the State Palace in Central Jakarta. (Reuters/Ajeng Dinar Ulfiana)
The Foreign Ministry has a new leader; more importantly, the right one.
President Prabowo Subianto announced on Thursday a sweeping cabinet reshuffle that, among its many moves, handed the foreign affairs portfolio to Arrmanatha “Tata” Nasir, a rising diplomatic star. The appointment matters not just for what it does but also for what it restores.
For 23 months, the post was held by Sugiono, a loyal Gerindra Party politician and trusted aide to Prabowo. His tenure had its merits: He listened to seasoned diplomats, including his second deputy Tata, and showed a rare willingness to defer to deep expertise.
Yet placing a political appointee at the helm of a government bureau built on institutional memory carries risk, nowhere more so than at the Foreign Ministry on Jl. Pejambon.
That risk was evident in the first two years of the Prabowo presidency. Foreign policy analysts flagged a familiar pattern: presidential commitments made unilaterally, including on joint maritime development in the South China Sea, on Gaza evacuations and on military hardware, that forced the ministry into damage control afterward.
When the Foreign Ministry becomes "a cleanup crew rather than an engine room", as one analyst put it, Indonesia's standing suffers in every capital that was not consulted.
Tata is a welcome correction. He has spent 27 years at the ministry, with postings in Geneva at the WTO, in Paris as ambassador to France and UNESCO and in New York as permanent representative to the United Nations, where he chaired the ECOSOC Coordination Segment and vice-chaired the Palestinian Rights Committee.
