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View all search resultsLuhut rebuffs China-bias claims amid Morowali airport brouhaha
The former senior minister urged the public to stay united and view strategic policies, including mineral downstreaming, from a wider perspective.
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Nickel smelters spew emissions on Jan. 26, 2024 into the skies above Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park and a nearby residential area in Bahodopi district, Morowali regency, Central Sulawesi. (Antara/Dhemas Reviyanto)
F
ormer senior minister Luhut Pandjaitan has pushed back against accusations of an alleged China bias during the previous administration and claims about threats to national sovereignty because of the operation of an international airport inside the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park (IMIP) in Central Sulawesi. He urged the public to stay united and view strategic policies, including mineral downstreaming, from a wider perspective.
Luhut, who served as coordinating maritime affairs and investment minister under former president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo from 2016 onward, said attracting large-scale foreign capital “was never easy,” and that China had been the only country both willing and able to provide the financing, market access and technology Indonesia needed at the time.
“We don’t side with China or the United States, we side with Indonesia. The fact is, China was the only one ready to step in [at the time],” Luhut said on Monday in a statement.
“Without downstreaming, Indonesia would not be in its current economic position.”
He added that the US lacked the required technology, citing a conversation with Tesla CEO Elon Musk that “confirmed the US was far behind China.”
A close confidant of Jokowi throughout his decade in office, and often described as the administration’s “de facto prime minister”, Luhut said he had “formally pitched” the downstreaming strategy to the former president as a way to secure long-term investment and ensure more minerals were processed domestically.
“If anyone claims these decisions were taken unilaterally by president Jokowi, let me be clear that coordination ran through me. Anyone challenging that is welcome to come to me with data,” he said.
