To all celebrating Chinese New Year yesterday, I wish you Gong Xi Fa Cai, which means “congratulations and be prosperous”!

One ethnic-Chinese Indonesian has more than just Chinese New Year to celebrate. He also recently regained his freedom after 20 months’ incarceration, and plans to get married very soon after his release on Jan. 24. Wow! Not wasting any time, are we?

Of course, I am referring to Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, who now wants to be called “BTP”. Shortly before his release, he wrote a letter, in which he said, among other things, he was glad he was not reelected as Jakarta governor in the 2017 regional election.

“I preferred to be held in Mako [Mobile Brigade Command headquarters] […] to learn to control myself for the rest of my life. If I had been reelected again, I would have been more arrogant [...] ruder [...] and would hurt more people.” Oh, reformed man, are we?

Being in jail didn’t eclipse him from the news. The former Jakarta governor had an endless stream of visitors, periodically he sent out messages to his supporters, he got divorced while in jail, and found a new love not long after.

Divorce? New love? Remarriage? Really? In this age of hoax news, the news was initially met with much scepticism and disbelief. BTP, calling it quits from Veronica Tan, wife of 20 years and lovely mother of three beautiful children.

But no, it was not fake news: photos of the court proceedings, documents, etc., as well as images of the man Vero allegedly had an affair with, were splashed out over the media for all to see.

So, who is wife-to-be number two? Her name is Puput Nastiti Devy, a former policewoman who used to be Veronica’s aide. She’s only 21, so there’s a 31-year age gap between her and BTP. She is said to have converted to Christianity and like Vero, who gave up her architectural studies upon marrying, Puput has resigned from the police force and has given up her pension from the police. Even before they tie the knot, Puput is already making sacrifices.

In a viral YouTube video BTP chatted with Oesman Sapta Odang, a politician from the Hanura Party, BTP explained he was getting married at the urging of his mother. She had said, “Hok, I can’t possibly take care of you, I want to stay with you, but I’m already in my 70s. How long will you wait to remarry? Your wife should be my substitute with regards to cooking, baking and taking care of you. The first one didn’t want to.”

Netizens were swift to criticize. First, the fact that a 52-year-old man, a hero to so many (including me!), is getting married because his mother told him to. Second, that he married so soon; third, that he married his ex-wife’s former aide, which also dismayed Fifi Lety, BTP’s sister who had acted as his defense lawyer; fourth, that he compared his former wife Veronica to his new wife-to-be publicly, deriding Vero’s cooking abilities.

Clearly disgusted, @nolla.tuuk posted: “that’s the climax of my disrespect for BTP. He wants to have a new wife, don’t say the old one can’t cook after 25 years. Crazy! A good man doesn’t compare his ex-wife with the new one on video. Unbelievable”.

Both Fifi and BTP’s daughter reacted strongly as well. His daughter posted several photos of her mum’s home-cooked dishes on her Instagram account captioned: “Mama’s comfort food”.

There are historical precedents to the Indonesian public reacting to leaders treating their wives badly. Popular cleric Abdullah “Aa Gym” Gymnastiar lost many of his female fans when he married polygamously in 2006. Women activists angrily demonstrated against president Sukarno when he married Hartini in 1958 (while Fatmawati was still his wife). Similarly, BTP has also lost fans. As james_vonbe tweeted, “I am disappointed with Pak Ahok. Why rush to get married? Why doesn’t he rest first, spend time with his kids, get to know Puput and her family better?”.

The case of BTP and Puput also reminds me of Sukarno’s marriage to his seventh wife Yurike Sanger, still in high school when they met. Sukarno was 63, she 17. Age difference: 44 years. Talk about power imbalance.

BTP has not stated any of his own personal reasons for wanting to marry Puput. He only mentions that the lines on the palms of their hands are the same, which he took to mean that they are indeed jodoh (a match). That’s a definitive reason for marrying Puput? Really?

As a feminist who believes that the personal is political, this is my analysis. The real reason for BTP marrying Puput is a combination of personal revenge against Vero and political-historical reasons. BTP is an alpha male, and he’s angry at being cuckolded by his wife, without considering how his behavior as a husband might have pushed her into having an affair — the claimed reason for their divorce.

Then there is BTP’s collective consciousness related to the political-historical tension between Muslims and Chinese in Indonesia. His political downfall was caused by Islamists, and despite Islam’s spread being facilitated by Chinese commerce, and despite the fact that so much of Indonesian culture is derived from the Chinese, throughout Indonesian history, ethnic Chinese have been discriminated against.

Puput is a Javanese, and used to be a Muslim. BTP’s marriage to her is symbolic of his conquering “the enemy”. It’s a very common strategy in politics: marriage as a tool of domination and alliances, especially in dynastic politics. A princess is married off to a foreign ruler to cement a bond between two royal houses, as if she was a lifeless gift. Domination can also be in the form of rape, which was the case with the May rapes in 1998 of young Chinese women — an expression of rage by an Indonesian mob angry at Soeharto and his Chinese cronies.

I wish BTP and Puput all the best for their coming nuptials. May they have a long-lasting and happy marriage, and share a lot of meals and cakes together. All home-cooked by Puput naturally, with BTP — as a reformed man — assisting her.
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The writer is the author of Sex, Power and Nation.

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