TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The close relationship between Housing and Settlement Areas Minister Maruarar Sirait and Cabinet Secretary Lt. Col. Teddy Indra Wijaya is reflected in photographs displayed on the floor of the minister’s office at Wisma Mandiri 2 Building in Central Jakarta. Not just one photograph, but two. Framed in large gold-colored frames, one portrait shows Maruarar facing Teddy while playing chess. Another depicts Maruarar posing with Teddy and President Prabowo Subianto.
Maruarar said the chess photograph was taken when Teddy visited his office in March 2025. The Gerindra Party politician regularly reported on his ministry’s performance and subsidized housing programs to Teddy. He believed those reports would eventually reach the President’s desk. “I display photographs of people who have helped me,” Maruarar said in a special interview with Tempo in Central Jakarta on Monday, May 18, 2026.
Ara—as Maruarar is commonly known—said he had been friends with Teddy for a long time. Teddy had visited him several times for personal occasions. A day after last year’s Christmas celebration, on December 26, 2025, Teddy paid a visit to Ara’s private residence in Menteng, Central Jakarta. Videos of the visit were uploaded to both Ara and Teddy’s social media accounts.
According to Ara, Teddy often helped him resolve government matters. Among other things, Ara said, Teddy arranged and ensured President Prabowo’s attendance at two mass subsidized-housing mortgage signing ceremonies in Bogor, West Java, in September 2025 and in Serang, Banten, in December 2025. “We have to report every breakthrough because he is the one who shapes all the Cabinet narratives,” said the former politician from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).
