President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and defence minister Prabowo Subianto have gone to great lengths these past weeks to publicly dismiss rumours of a growing rift between them ahead of the Oct. 20 transfer of power.

But as they lavish praise on one another, and no matter how hard they try to show unity, they cannot conceal tensions coming from policy differences, priorities and contrasting leadership styles that have sparked those rumours.

The two men have agreed to dispense with the need for a transitional team. Since Prabowo and his Gerindra Party are already part of Jokowi’s coalition government, why create one?

In the last two months, Jokowi has added a few more Gerindra politicians to the cabinet who will help oversee the transfer of power.

There have been a lot of accommodations between the outgoing and incoming presidents to ensure a smooth transition.

But this transition is anything but, with its changing power relations dynamics. Both men know this is not a relationship between two equals.

Jokowi has all the powers conferred on the president and Prabowo as his minister is a servant, a very loyal one.

Come Oct. 20, Prabowo, winner of the February presidential elections, will be the stronger of the two.

Even if Jokowi will have some role in the next government, he will be the lesser power.

He will continue to exert influence in Prabowo’s administration, either through his 36-year-old son Gibran Rakabuming Raka, who is going to be the next vice president, or through the Golkar Party, which he now controls, and which will be the second-largest party in Prabowo’s coalition government.

Count on Jokowi being there, although in what official capacity is very much dependent upon Prabowo, who will soon be calling most of the shots.

One area of tension emerging is the future of Nusantara, the new city being built on forest land in East Kalimantan, which, once ready, will be the country’s new capital to replace Jakarta, a project that Jokowi started, and which will be one of the most visible legacies of his 10-year rule.

While Prabowo has openly pledged to continue the project, he is not going to allocate as much money out of the government budget as Jokowi has.

In the 2025 draft budget beginning on Jan. 1, the Nusantara project will receive a mere Rp143 billion (RM40 million), a miniscule sum compared to Rp42.5 trillion Jokowi has spent until July.

The project has already suffered long delays, forcing the government to postpone sending the first batch of civil servants to Nusantara originally planned for this month.

Ironically, the budget plan was prepared and unveiled to the public by Jokowi as the sitting president in August.

Helping to draft the budget was Thomas Djiwandono, a nephew of Prabowo and a key Gerindra member, whom Jokowi recruited in July as deputy finance minister.

Any fight over the budget allocations took place behind closed doors, but the outcome, as seen from the 2025 budget plan, shows that Jokowi has been accommodating.

He has had to be. Prabowo still has the option to change the budget plan if he is not happy with it when he takes over in October, and that would be even more embarrassing to Jokowi.

The message is clear that Nusantara is not going to be a big priority under Prabowo.

Instead, he has allocated a huge sum of over Rp70 trillion in 2025 for the new free-school-lunch that he will launch in January.

Defence and security will also receive the lion’s share of the 2025 budget, reflecting the bias, if not priority of the former general.

Regarding style, Prabowo will be a foreign-policy oriented president while Jokowi is widely seen as a domestic-issues president.

Since his election victory was declared in April, Prabowo has travelled to more than 10 countries, including China, Japan, France, Russia and Australia, where was introduced as Indonesia’s next president and was met by their leaders, even though he travelled in his official capacity as defence minister.

Prabowo has insisted at home and abroad that he will continue the policies pursued by his predecessor. He could hardly be expected to say otherwise as long as he is a minister in Jokowi’s cabinet.

In a speech during a Gerindra congress last week, he not only lavished praise on Jokowi, describing him as the best political mentor he could ever have, he went out of his way to warn against anyone trying to attack the integrity of the outgoing president.

“If anyone pinched Jokowi, all Gerindra members would feel it too,” he said.

However, Prabowo draws the line when it comes to the President’s attempt at circumventing laws in building his own political dynasty.

Last month, he blocked a bill in the House to amend the law on regional elections that would have paved the way for Jokowi’s youngest son, 29-year-old Kaesang Pangarep, to contest the race for governor in Jakarta or Central Java. Gerindra withdrew support for the bill in the eleventh hour, essentially killing it, after massive protests outside the House against the proposed amendments.

Jokowi spoke at Gerindra’s Aug. 31 congress, dressed in the party’s uniform, and saying the party is fortunate to have Prabowo, whom he described as a “visionary leader” and a “true patriot”.

Dismissing rumours of the rift, Jokowi said that the two had their differences when they were rivals in the 2019 president election.

He did not have to discuss any differences that may exist after Prabowo joined his Cabinet in October 2019 since technically they don’t exist. He is the president and Prabowo is a servant. There is no argument there.

Expect to see more tensions arising between the two as the transfer of power is approaching.