Anies left for Tokyo on Sunday to attend the Urban 20 Forum where he shared the stage with Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi in a panel discussion.
hortly after winning the Jakarta gubernatorial election in 2017, Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan pledged that he would make Jakarta more visible on the international stage and one of ways to do that was that he would attend global meetings held for the world's major cities.
On Sunday, Anies did just that. He left for Tokyo to attend the Urban 20 Forum where he shared the stage with Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi in a panel discussion.
The only problem was that two days later, Jakarta was engulfed in a riot that some say was the worst since the May 1998 unrest.
Prior to leaving town for Tokyo, Anies had instructed all hospitals in the city to be ready for possible victims of clashes that could take place when supporters of Gerindra Party chairman Prabowo Subianto took to the streets and called for the election commission to annul the result of the 2019 presidential election.
With hundreds injured from clashes with riot police and eight people reported dead, Anies appeared to have made the right call, but many others have faulted him for leaving Jakarta when he knew that political unrest was imminent.
Soon after angry protesters began occupying Jakarta's main streets, the hashtag #AniesDimana (Where is Anies) started trending on Twitter. "The governor is going on a picnic, the deputy governor is gone... while the city is on fire. People could not make a living," one Twitter user with the handle @desindra posted on the popular social media site.
Others simply posted photos of the rioting and wrote the hashtag #AniesDimana.
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