Jakarta. People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) Speaker Ahmad Muzani used his annual-session address on Friday to strongly endorse President Prabowo Subianto’s flagship programs, praising initiatives ranging from free nutritious meals and village cooperatives to a controversial centralized system for certain natural-resource exports.

Muzani, a senior politician in Prabowo’s Gerindra Party, described the free nutritious meals program as a “breakthrough toward realizing the Golden Indonesia 2045 vision.”

“This program is not merely about distributing food. It is part of our effort to educate the nation and develop healthy, high-quality Indonesians,” Muzani said. “It is our shared dream to have outstanding children who can compete successfully.”

He delivered the remarks before Prabowo and his cabinet, lawmakers, former presidents and vice presidents, and foreign representatives at the parliament complex in Jakarta.

Muzani also endorsed the administration’s program to establish tens of thousands of village cooperatives, describing it as an implementation of the constitutional principle that the national economy should be organized as a collective endeavor based on the spirit of mutual cooperation.

“This mandate shows that Indonesia’s economic development cannot simply be left to free competition that allows the strong to become stronger while the weak are increasingly marginalized,” he said. “Cooperatives are one instrument for achieving economic democracy.”

Muzani said the village cooperatives could strengthen farmers’ bargaining power, expand market access for fishermen, improve financing access for micro businesses and facilitate the distribution of essential goods.

He also expressed support for Prabowo’s free-school initiative and a policy requiring exports of certain natural resources to be channeled through Danantara Sumberdaya Indonesia.

Muzani again invoked the Constitution, which stipulates that natural resources should be controlled by the state and used for the greatest possible prosperity of the people.

He argued that the establishment of Danantara Sumberdaya was consistent with that principle and would help increase state revenue, strengthen the management of foreign-exchange earnings from exports, and combat practices such as under-invoicing and transfer pricing.

The arrangement would also strengthen Indonesia’s bargaining position in global trade, he said.

The centralized export policy has previously drawn controversy over the government's expanding role in commodity trade, but Muzani presented it as a mechanism to ensure the state captures greater economic benefits from the country’s natural resources.

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