N A M A R I N

  A new commander-in-chief of the Indonesia Armed Forces, locally dubbed “Panglima TNI” has been designated. Admiral Yudo Margono, is to replace the incumbent Army General Andika Perkasa, who will retire this year. Yudo in fact was the only name submitted for nomination by President Joko Widodo to the House of Representative (DPR). The nomination was actually quite surprising since the public has rumored earlier that the Army Chief of Staff General Dudung Abdurrachman was the next Panglima TNI.   Something similar happened last year, when Air Chief Marshall Hadi Tjahjanto, the then-Panglima TNI, was to be replaced, as he had already reached a mandatory retirement age of 58, as stipulated by the prevailing Law No. 34/2004 on TNI. In accordance with a tradition practiced after Reform, his replacement was supposed to be Yudo, but President Joko Widodo instead nominated Andika Perkasa as the sole candidate to the Parliament. His choice was a response to a political maneuver by many par