Ashabiyah Hambalang Is Not Enough

There is apparently something more frightening than political battles: the budget map. Nanik Sudaryati Deyang admitted she could not sleep. ‘Holding a large budget is what gave me acute trauma,’ she wrote on Facebook. Guarding state money, she said, is like standing on the edge of a cliff: a slight slip and you could fall. She would not even sign documents alone; two deputy heads of the National Nutrition Agency (BGN) had to co-sign. When her personal secretary brought a stack of documents, she was already ‘paranoid and feeling hot and cold’. Eventually her body gave in. Her heart was affected. After nine days bedridden and a week in hospital, the woman who had led the BGN for only about a month and a half resigned due to health problems.

This confession is interesting not because an official can be afraid of money—on the contrary, it is good if officials fear state funds. What is interesting is who Nanik is, who her predecessor was, who her successor is, and why President Prabowo Subianto repeatedly entrusts his favourite programme to people he knows and trusts. BGN is no giant rice stall. It manages one of the largest public service operations the republic has ever built. The BGN’s 2026 budget was initially designed at IDR 335 trillion, later stated as IDR 268 trillion, and has since been made more efficient. The free nutritious meal programme targets 82.9 million beneficiaries; by May it had already reached 62.7 million people. Dadan Hindayana once described the scale of cash flow more bluntly: when the programme is fully running, around IDR 1.2 trillion must be disbursed every day.

With that amount of money, who occupies the BGN chief’s chair is no small matter. The President first entrusted it to Dadan Hindayana, an IPB academic who led the agency since its formation. But Dadan’s journey ended badly. On 3 June 2026, the Attorney General’s Office named him and several former BGN leaders as suspects in an alleged corruption case involving the free nutritious meal programme and detained them. The case is still in process; the presumption of innocence naturally applies. Prabowo then handed the BGN to Nanik, who had previously served as deputy head. Nanik is not someone who only appeared when Prabowo entered the palace. In her resignation statement, she herself mentioned having followed Prabowo for 14 years. She is a long-time member of that circle of trust. Yet less than two months after becoming BGN chief, Nanik succumbed to her health condition. She resigned on 22 July 2026.

Who is her successor? Another long-time insider. On the same day, the President inaugurated Sudaryono. His name may be relatively new to the national public, but he is certainly not new to Prabowo. A graduate of SMA Taruna Nusantara and Japan’s National Defense Academy, he served as Prabowo’s personal assistant for about five years, from 2009 to 2014. He then pursued a career in business and politics, becoming Deputy Secretary-General of Gerindra, Chairman of Gerindra’s Central Java chapter, and later Deputy Minister of Agriculture. From that post, Prabowo moved him to become Head of BGN. Sudaryono is also not a poor man suddenly tasked with guarding a rice warehouse. His wealth report shows assets of around IDR 91.76 billion with debts of approximately IDR 60.37 billion, leaving a net worth of roughly IDR 31.4 billion. Wealth figures, of course, prove neither competence nor incompetence. They merely complete the profile of a businessman, politician and former close aide to Prabowo who is now trusted to guard one of the government’s largest budget taps.

This pattern reminds me of a thinker from Tunisia who died more than six centuries ago: Ibn Khaldun. In his work al-Muqaddimah, which I translated in the 1980s, Ibn Khaldun uses the concept of ashabiyah. The word is often translated as group solidarity, but its meaning is richer. Ashabiyah is the binding energy that makes a group of people feel ‘us’: knowing one another, trusting one another, defending, sacrificing and enduring together. It is with this energy, according to Khaldun, that a group gains political strength and eventually builds mulk, or sovereignty. Reading Prabowo through this lens is more interesting than simply accusing him of liking to appoint his friends.