Problems Arise from Flagship Programs and the President's Circle of Power

TWO years in, Prabowo Subianto's administration should serve as a crucial moment to evaluate how political promises have been translated into policies and tangible changes for the public.

Since taking office on October 20, 2024, Prabowo has introduced several major agendas, including improving nutritional quality through the Free Nutritious Meal (MBG) program, strengthening the economy, ensuring food security, and enhancing social protection.

However, the two-year journey of this administration has also revealed various issues worthy of attention.

Ironically, some of these issues stem from the President's flagship programs and those within his immediate circle of power.

The MBG program is facing allegations of corruption relating to the management of the National Nutrition Agency (BGN).

Amidst numerous natural disasters and forest and land fires, procurement within the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) is also entangled in corruption scandals.

These problems become even more sensitive with allegations of wiretapping targeting the President that implicate former National Police Chief General Listyo Sigit Prabowo.

Meanwhile, Gibran Rakabuming Raka's decision to step down as Vice President reignited debates regarding presidential candidate nomination processes and political legitimacy.

Each of these events has distinct characteristics, actors, and legal processes. It is inaccurate to consider them part of a single conspiracy or as evidence of systemic governmental issues.

Nonetheless, one pattern is noteworthy: these problems do not merely arise at the peripheries of governance but directly impact key programs and the power dynamics closely associated with the President.

From a political communication perspective, this series of events presents deeper issues than mere negative news coverage. There is potential for a reputation crisis to expand into a legitimacy crisis and a loss of public trust.

The question is, how will Prabowo's administration manage this situation? Is clarifying matters, controlling news coverage, and highlighting program successes sufficient?

Or is a more fundamental overhaul of governance, official integrity, and government-public relations required?

From Political Public Relations to Power Legitimacy

In the study of Political Public Relations, political communication is not merely understood as building an image, managing news, or conveying government successes.

Communication is part of managing relationships between political actors and the public, including how power builds trust and maintains legitimacy.

Jesper Strömbäck of Mid Sweden University and Spiro Kiousis of the University of Florida, in their book Political Public Relations: Principles and Applications (2011), define political PR as a management process conducted by political actors through communication and actions to build and maintain relationships and reputation with key publics.

One crucial point from this thinking is that communication and action are inseparable elements.

This means that the success of government communication cannot merely be gauged by the number of positive messages conveyed, the media reach, or the President's popularity.

Communication must be grounded in accountable political behavior and institutional performance.

This brings us to Prabowo's governance challenge. When priority programs and those in power face integrity issues, it is insufficient for the government to merely state that each case is an individual responsibility.

The President retains political responsibility to ensure oversight systems and accountability mechanisms function properly.

This issue relates to the concept of political legitimacy. Jesper Falkheimer of Lund University, in his study Legitimacy Strategies and Crisis Communication (2021), published by the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, explains the close relationship between crisis communication and legitimacy.

A crisis can test public acceptance of an institution's authority and right to govern.

In other words, legitimacy is not solely obtained through formal procedures or electoral victories.

Legitimacy is also maintained through institutional behavior, quality decision-making, official integrity, and the government’s ability to account for its authority.

An administration with electoral legitimacy still requires performance legitimacy and moral legitimacy in exercising its power.

A Crisis in One Institution Affects Another

One relevant concept for understanding this situation is reputational spillover, which refers to the spreading impact of one entity's reputation to another related or associated entity.

Shari R. Veil of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Lindsay L. Dillingham of Lipscomb University, in the chapter Reputational Interdependence and Spillover: Exploring the Contextual Challenges of Spillover Crisis (2020), explain that a crisis in one organization can create concerns, uncertainty, and perceptions of loss for another organization that has ties to it.

Meanwhile, Shoeb Mohammad and Andrew Crane in Theorizing Reputational Spillovers (2015) develop a framework explaining how reputational impacts can spread.

The two key factors they identify are focality, which refers to how much an event draws attention, and perceived relatedness, which concerns how the public perceives the connection between the crisis-stricken entity and others.

Although both studies predominantly address organizations and companies, their conceptual frameworks can apply to government reputation interrelations.

In Prabowo's context, this relationship is significant because priority programs, state institutions, officials, and the President's leadership exist in a political ecosystem that the public associates with one another.

When governance issues arise within flagship programs, the repercussions may extend to public perceptions of the President's leadership.

When similar questions emerge in other state institutions, the public may begin linking these events to overall governance oversight quality and integrity.

Here, reputation becomes interdependent. The reputation of one institution does not stand alone when it is part of the same government.

This phenomenon also relates to reputational interdependence, as discussed by Barnett and Hoffman (2008) in Beyond Corporate Reputation: Managing Reputational Interdependence.

The core idea is simple: the actions and reputation of one entity can affect another that is connected to it.

For the government, the implications are significant. The President must be aware not only of his personal reputation but also of the reputations of programs, ministries, agencies, and officials under his leadership.

Consequently, a sector crisis can potentially escalate into an overall government reputation crisis.

Why Defensive Communication Is Not Enough?

In crises, governments are often tempted to prioritize defensive communication strategies.

Assertions that the President was unaware of an issue, that the case is an individual responsibility, or that legal processes are ongoing can indeed be part of the response.

However, this approach is insufficient unless accompanied by corrective actions.

William L. Benoit, a communication scholar at the University of Missouri, through Image Repair Theory published in Public Relations Review (1997), outlines several strategies for restoring reputation during a crisis.

These strategies include denial, diminishment of responsibility, impact reduction, corrective action, and apologies.

Benoit’s framework helps clarify communication choices available to the government. However, in a governmental context, image restoration strategies must be coupled with substantive accountability.

The government cannot simply assert that an issue is an individual mistake. The public also wants to know why oversight systems failed, how deviations occurred, who bears institutional responsibility, and what changes will be made.

The concern is that if the government continues to use communication to defend its leader, while structural problems remain unaddressed, communication may exacerbate public distrust.

This thinking aligns with Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) developed by W. Timothy Coombs of Eastern Illinois University.

In the article Protecting Organization Reputations During a Crisis (2007) in Corporate Reputation Review, Coombs explains that crisis communication strategies must consider public perceptions of the organization's accountability for the crisis.

The greater the responsibility the public associates with an organization, the more urgent the need for corrective actions and accountability.

For a government, this means that the President cannot merely distance himself from issues arising under his leadership. There is a political responsibility to rectify the systems that allowed these issues to occur.

Here lies the difference between Political Public Relations and mere political image management. Substantive political PR builds relationships and legitimacy through actions, dialogue, and accountability.

Overemphasis on image management poses the risk of merely striving to maintain a positive perception.

Public Trust Is Not Built on Positive Narratives

Trust in government is not born merely from the government's ability to deliver persuasive messages. It is also determined by the public's experiences of how government exercises its authority.

Research by Maja Svenbro and Misse Wester of Lund University, Examining Legitimacy in Government Agencies’ Crisis Communication (2023), published in the International Journal of Strategic Communication, illustrates the critical relationship between government crisis communication, legitimacy, and public acceptance.

Simultaneously, Olga Eisele’s study How Do Executives Communicate About Crises? A Framework for Comparative Analysis develops a framework for assessing executive crisis communication across four dimensions: information accessibility, capacity to alleviate public concerns, accommodation of public interests, and consistency of communication among crisis managers.

These four dimensions can be utilized to evaluate Prabowo's government communication.

First, does the government provide accessible and verifiable information?

Second, does government communication address public concerns? Third, is the government willing to listen to criticism and accommodate public interests? Fourth, is there consistency in communication among ministries and agencies?

The issue is not how often officials make statements, but whether the information provided meets public needs and is accompanied by tangible actions.

The OECD in its Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions 2026 also identifies integrity, openness, reliability, responsiveness, and fairness as critical factors influencing public trust in government.

These findings strengthen the argument that transparency is not merely a communication tool. Transparency is an essential part of governance that enables the public to oversee power.

Thus, building public trust requires more than positive narratives. The government must ensure that its institutional behaviors and performance align with the messages conveyed.

The Next Three Years Will Be a Test of Trust

After two years in office, Prabowo needs a more fundamental evaluation. The issue is not just how to respond to the various crises that have arisen but also how to ensure similar problems do not continue to recur.

At least four agendas warrant attention.

First, evaluate the integrity and governance of strategic officials. The placement of officials should not rely solely on political considerations, closeness, or coalition accommodation.

Capacity, track record, integrity, and the ability to manage public interests must be primary considerations.

Second, strengthen oversight of the President's priority programs. The MBG and other strategic programs should have audit mechanisms, procurement transparency, independent oversight, and effective public grievance channels.

The success of a program should not merely be measured by the size of the budget or the number of beneficiaries but also by governance quality and its impact.

Third, establish a Reputation and Accountability Center within the government. This center should not merely serve as a media monitoring or news management hub.

Its function should encompass reputational risk mapping, early issue detection, cross-agency communication coordination, public perception analysis, and policy follow-up evaluation.

This center must be capable of identifying potential conflicts of interest, discrepancies between promises and policy implementation, and public dissatisfaction with services before they escalate into crises.

However, this center must not be a tool to control news coverage or limit criticism. Its role should ensure the government is more open to information and quicker to rectify mistakes.

Fourth, shift governmental communication orientation from defensive to dialogic and accountable.

The government needs to create spaces for criticism, honestly explain issues, and communicate progress on problem resolution. Communication must be based on data and tangible actions, not just positive narratives.

The last two years of Prabowo's administration serve as a lesson that ambitious programs do not always correlate with execution quality.

Flagship programs require strong governance, integritous officials, and oversight systems that do not rely on political favoritism.

Prabowo needs to use the next three years as a moment of reform—not merely replacing officials or reshuffling the political composition around power, but reinforcing a governmental system that holds every official accountable, ensures every program is transparently monitored, and mandates that every institution operates within the law.

From a Political Public Relations perspective, the government’s reputation cannot be dissociated from its political behavior and governance quality.

Ultimately, effective communication will not conceal poor governance in the long run. Conversely, good governance demands open communication so the public is informed, understands, and can oversee.

The criteria for governmental success is not only about how many programs are launched, how much budget is spent, or the strength of political support in parliament.

A more fundamental measure is whether the country is governed with integrity, whether the law applies to everyone, and whether the public still has reasons to trust their government.

For the greatest challenge of governance after two years is not just about maintaining the President's image but ensuring that his flagship programs do not become sources of problems and that those close to him do not become vulnerabilities for the administration.