Mother: The number of rats are growing fast. Where's father Terong (eggplant)? Get him to help us!!!
Kid: Dad keeps going away.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto's frequent overseas junkets are drawing growing scrutiny with many starting to questioning the transparency, urgency and tangible benefits they bring as the country grapples with a weakening rupiah, mass layoffs and a spate of high-profile corruption cases.
Ahead of the Idul Adha holiday last week, Prabowo travelled to Paris for talks with French President Emmanuel Macron. The trip marked Prabowo's fourth visit to France since taking office in October 2024 in a schedule that has seen him visit at least 29 countries in more than 50 overseas engagements.
Former deputy foreign minister Dino Patti Djalal has urged Prabowo to scale back the frequency of overseas visits saying public concerns should not be dismissed outright.
"Since assuming office, the President has spent roughly one out of every six days abroad. It is therefore understandable that some people view this as unusual", Djalal was quoted as saying by the Jakarta Post on Saturday.
Djalal argued that presidential trips require substantial state spending on transportation, accommodation, logistics and security arrangements, with the cost of a single visit potentially reaching hundreds of billions of rupiah.
Padjadjaran University foreign policy analyst Teuku Rezasyah meanwhile cautioned that the president's hands-on diplomatic style should not sideline Indonesia's diplomatic corps, noting that ambassadors have appeared largely absent from several high-profile meetings with foreign leaders.
"At the end of the day, the person who understands France best from Indonesia's perspective is the Indonesian ambassador to France, yet the ambassador was not visible during Prabowo's latest visit", Rezasyah told the Jakarta Post, noting that the same thing happened when Prabowo visited Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He also suggested that some initiatives announced during overseas visits were poorly thought out citing Prabowo's recent instruction for all Indonesian schools to being teaching French. The proposal drew criticism from educators and policymakers, as did his earlier suggestion to introduce Portuguese-language programs following talks with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva last year.
The government however has been quick to defend Prabowo with Cabinet Secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya claiming that his visits have helped attract trillions of rupiah in investment.
"The total investment realised during this one-and-a-half-year period is around 2,430 trillion rupiah, based on data from the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM)", Wijaya said in a statement on Monday June 1.
A review of BKPM data however shows that this is actually the combined value of foreign direct investment (FDI) and domestic investment, and the total FDI from the fourth quarter of 2024 through to the first quarter of 2026 was only 1,396.7 trillion rupiah.
Not only is this significantly lower than the figure claimed by Wijaya, economists point out that much of this would have being realised without or without Prabowo's foreign visits.
And as if to highlight Prabowo's lack of attention to domestic affairs, only days after his return from France the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) arrested Deputy Immigration and Corrections Minister Silmy Karim, the second high-profile government official in two days to face corruption charges.
The arrest came a day after the Attorney General's Office (AGO) detained Dadan Hindayana, the former head of the National Nutrition Agency (BGN) which oversees Prabowo's flagship Free Nutritious Meals (MBG) program for school children, which has been dogged by criticisms over its high cost, food poisoning cases, operational shortcomings and procurement irregularities.
