Indonesia’s Slow Disaster Response: President Prabowo Constrained by His Own Agenda

The series of fatal floods that have struck three provinces in Sumatra have laid bare a troubling feature of Prabowo Subianto’s administration: its lack of preparedness and capacity to respond to crisis. Triggered by tropical cyclone Senyar, the disaster has left at least 1,016 dead, 217 missing, more than 5,400 injured and over 624,670 people displaced.

This catastrophe was foreseeable. Several days before Senyar made landfall (from 25 to 30 November), the Indonesian Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) had issued clear warnings about its impact. Yet neither the central government nor regional authorities took meaningful preventive measures.

Now, more than a fortnight after, conditions in many affected areas remain dire. The storm’s destruction of roads and bridges severely hampers aid and water distribution, adding to growing frustration. Even the Regent of North Aceh publicly broke down in tears, admitting his inability to cope with the disaster’s scale. Adding to the tension, reports indicate that people are flying the pro-separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) flag in some affected areas.

While President Prabowo has visited the disaster-affected area three times, his visits have not translated into an adequate disaster mitigation response. Ironically, they have exposed the absence of coherent planning and weak institutional coordination. More troublingly, when the floods first struck, officials in Jakarta reportedly had little understanding of the catastrophe’s scale. The president was perceived as being insensitive to the disaster victims when his speech praised palm oil as a pillar of Indonesia’s energy independence, when this very industry, long associated with deforestation, is widely blamed for exacerbating the flooding.

Meanwhile, several cabinet members and Jakarta-based politicians appear to treat the crisis as an opportunity for self-promotion. A conspicuous example was Zulkifli Hasan, Coordinating Minister for Food Affairs, who was shouldering sacks of rice and posing while helping residents to clean mud from their homes.

Prabowo’s year-old administration appears profoundly unprepared for crisis management, which is deeply ironic, given that many of their flagship policies, such as food estates and energy independence, are justified as measures helping Indonesia to anticipate (and prevent) future crises and build resilience. Yet when confronted with this large-scale disaster, the government’s response has been slow and disorganised.

Why did this failure occur? Several factors appear to be at play, with the first being incompetence and poor coordination: problems that can be traced directly to Prabowo’s governing style. He has surrounded himself with inexperienced aides who seem to be shielding him from criticism rather than advising him. Information reaching the president is tightly filtered by a small circle of young men who are neophytes in government, who lack experience managing a national administration.

Their slow and confused response echoes the government’s handling of mass demonstrations in late August. At that time, Prabowo was reportedly informed only after casualties had been reported and violence had occurred. Chaos and lawlessness persisted for three days or more, in the capital and across several other cities.

The second factor is the increasing dysfunction of the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), driven largely by severe budget cuts. In 2025, BNPB received only 2.01 trillion rupiah (about S$155 million), down sharply from 4.29 trillion rupiah (S$332 milllion) in 2024. These budgets pale in size compared to BNPB’s funds for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. For 2026, the budget is projected to collapse further, to 491 billion rupiah (S$38 million). This drastic reduction will undermine BNPB’s operational capacity, an especially serious risk given Indonesia’s position as a “disaster supermarket” – a country facing frequent and overlapping natural hazards and weather events. Disaster management appears not to be a priority under Prabowo’s administration.

Why did this failure occur? Several factors appear to be at play…

Meanwhile, the budget allocated for flood and landslide response in the three affected Sumatran provinces was initially only 500 billion rupiah; following public pressure, Prabowo added 4 billion rupiah (about S$309,000) for each of the 52 affected regencies and cities, along with 20 billion rupiah (about S$1.5 million) per province, raising the total disaster allocation to 768 billion rupiah (S$59.4 million).

The sums are minuscule compared to the projected losses and costs of reconstruction. An estimate from the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS) listed a total national economic loss of at least 68.67 trillion rupiah (about S$5.31 billion). For reconstruction, the BNPB has stated that at least 51.82 trillion rupiah (S$4 billion) will be required.

A third factor is the systematic weakening of regional government capacity. The process of re-centralisation (that is, drawing back power from the provinces to the centre) began under former President Joko Widodo and has continued – indeed, intensified – under Prabowo. Since the enactment of the Job Creation Law in 2020, the government’s authority to issue mining and plantation permits has been transferred almost entirely back to Jakarta. Furthermore, Prabowo has significantly reduced budget transfers to regional governments: these cuts are set to deepen in the 2026–2027 budget cycle, with average reductions of 25–30 per cent to regional budgets.

Finally, despite the scale of the devastation, the president has stubbornly refused to declare the floods and landslides a national disaster. Declaring a national disaster would unlock the national disaster reserve fund, allow international assistance to enter more rapidly, with fewer restrictions, compel all ministries to prioritise their disaster response, and place the president in charge of overall disaster management. By refusing to take this step, Prabowo has effectively hamstrung the national response and raised doubts about his leadership in a time of crisis.

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