The road to Indonesian hospitals is paved with good intentions and vomit.

It’s widely reckoned that Prabowo Subianto’s pledge to feed schoolkids and pregnant mums with a daily lunch was a big deal in his crushing election win last year.

The cashiered former general scored 58% in a contest against two civilian governors. All well till the cooks rolled up their sleeves.

TV news bulletins have shown hospital wards groaning with crying children clutching their tummies; anxiety-riven parents delivering their beloveds in cars as ambulances can’t cope; the distressing scenes are more like Gaza than Jakarta.

The patients are victims of food poisoning as some servers have been ignoring hygiene protocols and using expired and unrefrigerated foods exposed to tropical temperatures.

Trying to make money when less than one dollar is allocated for every meal means cutting costs and corners becomes routine.

Makan Bergizi Gratis (MBG – free nutritious meals) is a scheme to win political applause while helping the poor.

Childhood stunting, aka chronic malnutrition, damages the physical and mental growth of about 20% of newcomers to the world, corrodes their futures and threatens their lives.

Says UNICEF, “A child who experiences both wasting and stunting is more than twelve times more likely to die than a healthy child.”

Survivors often face a miserable future; society loses their talents, they lose their potential.

Wholesome food daily is vital though not the hoped-for panacea; vast multi-faceted social programmes including capital investments are necessary if stunting is to crash to Australian levels of 2% of under-fives – “among the lowest in the world”.

A Swiss/Indonesian academic report listed poor breastfeeding for the first six months as a cause, plus “low household socioeconomic status, premature birth, short birth length and low maternal height and education.

“Children from households with both unimproved latrines and untreated drinking water are also at increased risk. (Likewise) community and societal factors – particularly, poor access to healthcare and living in rural areas.”

When the Prabowo plan first dazzled electors, local journos should have risked opprobrium and asked: “What’s it going to cost, and where’s the money coming from?”

Now we know the answers are “lots” and “from raids on other budgets”, ironically including health and education. This year’s allocation of A$7 billion for the lunches is likely to expand six-fold in the next four years. That’s to feed close to 90 million.

Then the follow-up: “Who’s going to do the massive job of co-ordination, cooking and delivery? Washing up can be avoided by using disposable plates and cups; Indonesia’s not yet into serious recycling.

Catering companies in the world’s fourth most populous nation once included Vice-President Gibran Rakabuming. Before being pressed into politics, he ran a business feeding guests at weddings and PR splashes.

Invitees rarely topped three figures while the events they attended were more occasional than daily. Few could expand into mass manufacture.

Solution – call in the army.

As outlined before, Prabowo is determined to militarise a society that has spent this century reforming to escape the inherited dwifungsi (two functions – the army controlling civilian life and defence).

This was the policy of the second President Soeharto, also a former general and one-time father-in-law of the present president. Now dwifungsi is marching back.

Indonesia is another lucky country; despite stretching 5200 km across the world’s largest archipelago of about 17,000 islands, it’s not being threatened by neighbours – or even aggressive autocracies far away.

The nation is secular, but the majority follow moderate Islam and generally tolerate other beliefs.

As the half-million in uniform have little to do, why not get them to squeeze lemons rather than triggers?

But lads in big boots joined up to play bang-bangs, so the toys are being delivered to amuse.

Among them the 42-year old Italian aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi bought for A$682 million. An estimated A$10 billion is being set aside for other weapons, including second-hand fighter jets.

In the new age of Prabowo, securing money to counter imagined enemies is easy; for today’s domestic social problems, finding cash is tough – made even harder by the rupiah’s landslide.

A few weeks ago, tourists in Bali were selling their Australian dollars for 10,000 rupiah each; now they can get 11,000.

Another issue: Indonesians shower at the drop of a sarong, but large-scale commercial food preparation requires extra care and close supervision.

If you like your lunch smoked, yellow-fingered Sergeant Mohammed will oblige. Should the famished put holiness ahead of hunger, they may have problems entering paradise. Millions of food trays imported from China for the MBG have allegedly been contaminated with pork fat.

Amounts are microscopic and part of the manufacturing process, but anything to do with pigs is prohibited in Islam. The story may be a stir. Suggesting porcine products are used in a rival business can speedily smash opponents.

In this year’s first six months, about 1400 cases of food poisoning were reported by the Badan Gizi Nasional – BGN, the National Nutrition Agency. The list almost quadrupled in September’s last weeks.

Unsurprisingly, many parents have decided that Prabowo’s reputation and tucker boxes should go to the tip. That’s unlikely, as the president, along with most right-wing world leaders, is plump, proud and reckons he’s flawless; MBG was his baby, so it will have to thrive or else.

The BGN boss, university horticulture lecturer Dadan Hindayana, was chosen for his academic knowledge. This doesn’t include diplomatic reassurances to mums and dads:

“The total number of food poisonings was only 4711 out of one billion portions cooked during the nine-month programme. Of course, this can still be improved.”

Diah Saminarsih, chief executive of the non-profit Centre for Indonesia’s Strategic Development Initiatives, when told of the bureaucrats’ excuse of the poisoning as a “technical error”, replied:

“The true number of cases is suspected to be significantly higher, as many are reluctant to report what really happened. We call to suspend the program due to health concerns.”

As one academic commented: “Feeding millions is the easy part. Ensuring it changes lives is the real challenge. Without a clear and measurable financing strategy, this program risks becoming a long-term fiscal burden.”

Fixable stunting remains the painful fate damaging the present and future of one in every five newborns. Should they survive childhood, at least they’ll be safe from foreign gunboats.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.