In an air-conditioned, secured room in Jakarta, far from floodwater, fallen logs, and thick mud, President Prabowo Subianto continues to talk about how capable his government is in handling the floods and landslides in Sumatra. Yet three weeks after the disasters, people are still dying every day: some from hunger, others falling ill because of dirty water and the complete absence of sanitation.
As of Dec. 18, nearly a month into the catastrophe, 1,068 people have died. Almost three million others have been impacted, with nearly a million forced to evacuate and live in tents. Entire communities remain cut off. Aid is slow. Basic necessities are missing. This is not a crisis that is “under control.”
This disaster has shown what kind of leader Prabowo Subianto. He should have set up a command tent in the centre of the disaster zone, in the areas hit hardest by floods and landslides. He should have lived among his suffering people, managed the emergency directly, ensured problems were solved immediately, and run the country from there. That is what leadership does.
Unfortunately for Indonesia, he does not have it in him. He seems to be unable to feel the suffering of his own people deeply enough to generate urgency or care. He appears to live inside a political bubble, dependent on information filtered by ministers and advisers whose main job seems to be protecting his pride rather than telling him the truth.
Instead of introspection, Prabowo blames critics, dismissing them as malicious and politically motivated. He speaks of unnamed foreign forces that supposedly do not want Indonesia to progress or become strong. This reflex to externalise blame may be politically convenient, but it does nothing for people who are hungry, sick, and homeless.
Barely more than a year into his presidency, it is already clear that Prabowo is not up to the job. His handling of the Sumatra tragedy is outrageously frustrating and only confirms the broader incompetence of his government.
In one widely circulated video, his senior minister Zulkifli Hasan is seen eating at a restaurant in Aceh, seated in front of a long table filled with expensive food, eating voraciously with a big cigar in his left hand, just several kilometres from areas where people are still starving to death. The image is not merely insensitive; it is emblematic of a political elite completely detached from the disaster it claims to be managing.
In another scene, Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Bahlil Lahadalia is shown lying directly to the president, telling Prabowo that most affected areas have had their electricity restored. In reality, vast parts of Sumatra remain in total darkness as of today, showed by many videos shared online by Acehnese and civil society groups. Either the president is being misled, or he prefers to be lied to. Both possibilities are equally alarming.
The same moral bankruptcy was displayed by Home Affairs Minister Tito Karnavian. When neighbouring Malaysia offered humanitarian assistance to help victims in Sumatra, Tito did not respond with gratitude or urgency. Instead, he publicly dismissed the offer, stating that it was worth “only” one billion rupiah, and argued that if the value was that small, Indonesia had far more budget to handle the disaster itself. This was an exhibition of arrogance, insensitivity, and contempt for solidarity, delivered while people were still dying in tents and flooded villages.
More than 1,000 deaths later, one must ask: will this be enough for Indonesia to finally grasp the existential importance of disaster preparedness? Or, in a country where Prabowo’s government increasingly prioritises military power, nationalist spectacle, and extractive economic interests, will these deaths simply be written off as collateral damage? The government’s response revealed a grim truth: lives in Indonesia come cheap. Those who die can be replaced, ignored, or buried under bureaucratic apathy because, to the ruling elite, they represent neither power nor profit.
Disaster budgets in Indonesia have long been hollowed out, redirected toward politically advantageous programmes, image-building projects, or quietly squandered. Jakarta’s refusal to declare the Sumatra catastrophe a national disaster is not because the scale is insufficient, but because honesty carries political and fiscal costs. A national disaster declaration would unlock broader funding, reduce bureaucratic delays, legitimise international assistance, and invite public scrutiny. Instead, the government chose denial.
That denial has been openly justified by President Prabowo himself. He has repeatedly downplayed the scale of the catastrophe, arguing that it does not qualify as a national disaster because it affected “only three out of 38 provinces.” This arithmetic approach to human suffering, reducing a mass-casualty humanitarian emergency to a fraction on a map, reveals how profoundly the disaster has been underestimated at the highest level of power. It suggests that in Prabowo’s calculus, a thousand deaths are not enough if they are geographically inconvenient.
That denial was made painfully visible when, at the peak of the crisis, President Prabowo flew abroad to Pakistan and Russia to pursue diplomatic and defence engagements. He left behind a humanitarian emergency unfolding in real time. Only after public anger, ridicule, and mounting criticism did he return to Aceh.
When he finally stood before survivors, many of whom had lost their homes, families, and livelihoods, he chose to lecture them about protecting the environment, as if villagers buried in mud were responsible for decades of deforestation, illegal land clearing, mining concessions, and corporate impunity. A state that tolerated and benefited from environmental destruction now scolds its poorest victims.
What unfolded in Sumatra is among Indonesia’s deadliest climate-driven disasters since the 2004 tsunami. Entire districts remain inaccessible. Bridges and highways were swept away. Hospitals collapsed or filled with mud, leaving thousands without medical care. These are not abstract figures; they are mothers, children, farmers, teachers, entire communities wiped out overnight by floods made deadlier by political choices.
Yet even as humanitarian conditions deteriorated, Prabowo insisted that Indonesia was capable of handling the disaster alone. He dismissed criticism as political sabotage and continued blaming unnamed foreign forces. This rhetoric follows a familiar populist script: divide the world into loyal insiders and hostile outsiders, and treat accountability as an attack on sovereignty.
In disaster governance, this approach is dangerous. Accepting international humanitarian assistance during mass-casualty emergencies is not a sign of weakness; it is a global standard. Japan did so after the 2011 tsunami. Turkey did so after the 2023 earthquake. Even the United States accepted international help after Hurricane Katrina. Delaying or rejecting assistance only increases secondary deaths from hunger, disease, and untreated injuries.
Ironically, the government’s own ministers contradicted the president. Infrastructure Minister Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono publicly admitted that the Sumatra disaster was harder to manage than the 2004 Aceh tsunami because of its vast geographical spread. This admission quietly dismantled Prabowo’s claims of full control. If the disaster exceeds Aceh 2004 in complexity, then Indonesia’s capacity is overwhelmed.
While Jakarta clung to its rhetoric, the Governor of Aceh, Muzakir Manaf, chose a different path. Recognising the severity of the humanitarian crisis, he formally wrote to UNDP and UNICEF, opening the door to international assistance for food security, child health, clean water, and emergency shelter. This was leadership rooted not in pride, but in responsibility.
The contrast exposes a deep fracture within the Indonesian state. While the central government prioritises sovereignty theatre and political image, local authorities confront hunger, disease, and displacement directly.
Meanwhile, civilian disaster institutions are underfunded, understaffed, and structurally neglected. Prabowo’s administration has prioritised military spending and defence deals worth billions, while disaster mitigation systems limp along with low budget, ageing equipment and weak local capacity. Troop deployment has become a substitute for long-term planning, not because it should be, but because little else remains.
The deeper causes of the Sumatra tragedy lie beyond immediate response failures. Floods and landslides of this scale are not natural anomalies. They are the predictable outcome of decades of environmental destruction: forests cleared for plantations, hillsides carved open by mining roads, riverbanks destabilised by extraction. Heavy rain became lethal because policy allowed it to.
Indonesia is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, yet preparedness remains dangerously inadequate. Early-warning systems fail to reach communities. Evacuation routes are poorly planned. Emergency logistics are slow and fragmented. Infrastructure collapses because of corruption, weak enforcement, and outdated designs. When disaster strikes, Indonesia scrambles, and scrambling costs lives.
In Sumatra, it costs more than a thousand. This should never be an acceptable price. They should force a national reckoning. They should be the last time Indonesia buries its citizens beneath mud while its leaders fly abroad and lecture survivors about protecting an environment they did not destroy.
Whether Indonesia will learn remains an open question. History suggests otherwise. But the dead, the displaced, the grieving, and the forgotten deserve more than statistics. They deserve justice, and a government willing to protect the living before the next disaster arrives.
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Omong-Omong Media’s editorial is also published in The Jakarta Post every Monday.
