Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional or BRIN).
New BRIN chief Laksana Tri Handoko said that, according to a yet-to-be-published presidential regulation, the chair of the state ideology body, the Agency for Pancasila Ideology Education (BPIP), will head the BRIN supervisory council. That will be the matriarch of PDI-P (of which President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is a member), former president Megawati Soekarnoputri.
BRIN had been under the purview of the now-defunct Research and Technology Ministry. The agency will co-ordinate all research by government bodies and universities.
The new oversight of BRIN opens the door to politicisation of research in Indonesia.
Not only could the research budget be misused for narrow political-economy interests, the research institution could be policitised for profit-gaining. This can be done, for example, by giving scientific support to huge projects that do not necessarily benefit the public.