Indonesia Launches Reform Task Force, Staffs It With All the Same People
Indonesia forms a reform task force to fix its SOEs, by appointing the same people who broke them. Fresh titles, familiar faces.
JAKARTA — In what officials insist was a “purely administrative coincidence,” Indonesia’s newly formed SOE Reform Task Force features a lineup of former executives, commissioners, and senior advisors, all of whom have had prior roles in the very dysfunction they are now expected to solve.
“We wanted experience,” said one spokesperson, “and what better experience is there than being intimately involved in the original mess?”
Among the appointees are three former CEOs of struggling SOEs, two directors from companies with open corruption cases, and one deputy minister who famously called procurement “a creative process.” All have agreed to bring fresh ideas to the table.
A leaked internal memo confirmed that during the first official meeting, the task force spent 90 minutes discussing the catering vendor. Actual reform initiatives were pushed to “next quarter, once deliverables are more clearly aligned with stakeholder sensitivities.”
Several task force members defended their appointments, arguing that their unique position as architects of past failures gives them rare insight into what not to do… again.
One member, formerly CFO of a logistics SOE that once misplaced six shipping ports, stated, “Look, I’ve made the mistakes. Now I’m here to make sure those mistakes are made more strategically.”
Another member, speaking on condition of anonymity while being filmed for a television interview, added: “Of course I have experience. I’ve restructured the same company four times. That’s endurance.”
Sources close to the task force report early brainstorming included breakthrough ideas such as renaming “bailouts” to “strategic liquidity enhancements” and introducing a rotating CEO schedule so “no one is around long enough to be blamed.”
The announcement has raised eyebrows among Indonesia’s international partners, many of whom had hoped the reform task force would represent a shift toward global governance standards.
“They invited us to collaborate,” said one foreign embassy official. “But after reviewing the list, we assumed it was a prank.”
Foreign investors reportedly expressed concern that the new reform group might prioritize “continuity of inefficiency” over actual change. Some hedge funds have updated their Indonesia exposure to “watch, but not too closely.”
Meanwhile, at Garuda Indonesia, staff were reportedly “cautiously pessimistic” about the new task force, describing it as “like replacing the pilot mid-flight with the guy who overbooked the last one.”
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