Civil Society Coalition Highlights Deaths of Five Kopdes Manager Candidates During Military Training

The Civil Society Coalition for Security Sector Reform has expressed deep condolences over the deaths of five candidates for the Merah Putih Village Cooperative (Kopdes) Manager programme during basic military training. Centra Initiative Chairman Al Araf stated that this tragedy is a serious consequence of a fundamentally flawed policy that imposes a military approach into civilian space without any basis, relevance, or justifiable reason. “The coalition believes the deaths of the five KDMP candidates further demonstrate that the military education and training system is not appropriate to be applied haphazardly to civilians,” Al Araf said in a written statement on Saturday, 27 June 2026. He added that there is no connection between professionalism in managing cooperatives and military training. Competence in cooperative management is built through mastery of organisational governance, participatory leadership, accountability, financial literacy, and community empowerment, not through military drills. The coalition stated that involving the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI) in the KDMP programme is an inappropriate policy that contradicts the spirit of security sector reform. According to the coalition, aside from raising legal issues as it falls outside the TNI’s primary mandate as stipulated in the TNI Law, this policy also demonstrates the expanding practice of militarising civilian spaces. “The government seems to assume that every civilian governance issue can be resolved through a military approach, even though civilian organisations and military institutions have fundamentally different characters, functions, and objectives,” he said. The coalition also assessed that a militaristic approach for civilians, particularly these prospective KDMP managers, has the potential to erode the democratic values that are the very foundation of civilian leadership. The military environment is built on principles of command, hierarchy, and obedience relevant to the defence function. Conversely, civilian organisations require space for critical thinking, creativity, innovation, dialogue, argumentation, and participatory decision-making. “Transferring military culture into civilian organisations will only produce an authoritarian leadership pattern that is anti-criticism, lacks dialogue, and prioritises obedience over rational and collaborative problem-solving. This approach will not produce professional cooperative managers but will instead erode a healthy and democratic organisational culture,” he stated.