Prabowo's Reason For Making His Coalition Fat: I Want A Strong Future Government

President-elect Prabowo Subianto (ANTARA)

JAKARTA - President-elect Prabowo Subianto emphasized that he wanted to form a strong government so that his coalition was forced to become fat. Indonesia needs a strong government in order to take care of a very large and wide country.

In fact, Prabowo assessed that Indonesia's area is the same as the area of mainland Europe which consists of 27 countries. "I want to form a strong national unity government, forced by a large coalition. Later we will say, 'oh, Prabowo's cabinet is fat, many'. Yes, our country is big, Bung! Our country is wide and the same as Europe. Europe 27 countries. We are one country," he said.

Prabowo conveyed this when delivering avision statement at the closing ceremony of BNI Investor Daily Summit 2024 at the Jakarta Convention Center (JCC), Jakarta, Wednesday, October 9.

Prabowo then compared Indonesia with Timor Leste with a population of 1.34 million people with an area of 15,000 square kilometers. Meanwhile, Indonesia has 182 million inhabitants with an area of 1.8 million square kilometers.

Timor Leste, Prabowo said, has 28 ministers, while Indonesia has 34 cabinet ministers at this time. "If we are an authoritarian country, only one party can run this country with only 20 ministers, 24 ministers. However, I have to embrace all groups, there must be representatives of eastern, central, western Indonesia, ethnic B, ethnic A. This is Indonesia and indeed our job is tough," he explained.

Prabowo admitted that he had always emphasized unity. He always adhered to the ancient saying, namely 1,000 friends too little and one opponent too many.

"For me, matches are matches, competition is competition. It's like us at the Olympics, playing judo, hard, hard, key, once you're finished, you're declared to have won, who lost respect to giving hands, are friendly again. This is not just on the field of sports, brothers and sisters, this must be on the field. Every day. This must be our political culture. Competing, different, competing, as soon as it's finished, working together for the Indonesian people," he concluded.