Rieke Urges Prabowo to Immediately Issue Regulation on Village Cooperatives
Member of Commission XIII of the House of Representatives (DPR), Rieke Diah Puloka, has requested President Prabowo Subianto to immediately issue a presidential regulation concerning the integrated management of ‘Merah Putih’ village/sub-district cooperatives. According to her, such regulation is necessary to end regulatory fragmentation while awaiting the ratification of the Cooperatives Law, which is currently being discussed by the DPR.
Rieke stated that the issuance of the presidential regulation is urgent because the village cooperative programme is already underway, yet its implementation still faces various issues. “Studies show there is still regulatory fragmentation, overlapping authorities between ministries and agencies, institutional disharmony, unclear legal status for human resources, and a lack of integrated national data and supervision systems,” she said in a written statement on Saturday, 4 July 2026.
The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) politician noted that these conditions could potentially trigger conflicts of interest, abuse of authority, mismanagement, and even criminal acts of corruption. Therefore, the government needs to urgently close these loopholes through regulations that can serve as a reference for programme implementation.
“If the government is serious about making village cooperatives an instrument for implementing the mandate of Article 33 of the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia, then the regulatory architecture must be built within a single, cohesive regulation,” she remarked.
Rieke explained that cooperatives are a strategic instrument for fulfilling the mandate of Article 33 of the 1945 Constitution. However, she warned that the success of the programme should not be measured solely by the number of cooperatives formed or physical developments completed, but by the quality of governance that ensures legal certainty, protects human resources, secures state finances, and prevents corruption from the planning to the operational stages.
In her proposal, Rieke requested that the implementation of this programme be returned entirely to the Ministry of Cooperatives. This ministry, she stated, must be designated as the primary person in charge of the programme and act as the data custodian to integrate all information as a basis for planning, control, and evaluation.
The ‘Merah Putih’ village cooperative is one of the priority programmes of the Prabowo Subianto-Gibran Rakabuming Raka administration. Prabowo aims to establish up to 80,000 cooperatives across Indonesia.
According to data from the Ministry of Cooperatives as of 4 July 2026, 35,874 cooperative sites have been verified. Specifically, 14,656 physical outlets have been completed, while approximately 30,000 locations are currently in the stages of construction through to operational completion.