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Too hot to handle: How the lobster’s rise has led to a minister’s downfall
Indonesia's antigraft body has arrested Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Edhy Prabowo, the Gerindra politician behind the controversial regulation that reversed the ban on lobster larvae exports. Here's how the baby crustacean figures in his downfall.
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A member of the People’s Coalition for Fisheries Justice (KIARA) holds up a wooden fish ornament on July 13, 2020 during a protest in front of the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry in Jakarta. KIARA was protesting Ministry Regulation No. 12/2020 that reversed a previous ban on lobster larvae exports and the use of 'cantrang' (seine nets). (JP/Seto Wardhana)
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graft probe by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) into a case that implicates Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Edhy Prabowo in relation to the ministry’s export policy for lobster larvae, has put the spotlight on the highly prized commodity.
The KPK on Nov. 26 named Edhy as a suspect in the case along with six other individuals, in connection with its investigation into alleged bribery in exchange for export permits. Edhy is the architect of the export policy, which he issued in May to effectively reverse the ban his predecessor Susi Pudjiastuti had imposed on exporting lobster larvae.
The Gerindra Party politician is the first minister in President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s second-term Cabinet to be nabbed by the antigraft body. The KPK had named two ministers in the President’s first-term Cabinet, then-social affairs minister Idrus Marham and youth and sports minister Imam Nahrawi as suspects of separate graft cases in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister Luhut Pandjaitan, who briefly stepped in as interim fisheries minister on Nov. 25 after Edhy’s arrest, ordered an immediate review of the lobster larvae export policy. The following day, the ministry issued a circular imposing an indefinite moratorium on the issuance of any documents related to exports of lobster larvae.
Policy flip-flop on lobster larvae
In January 2015, shortly after Jokowi appointed her to his first-term Cabinet as the fisheries minister, Susi issued Ministerial Regulation No. 1/2015 that placed a size restriction on several species of lobster and crab and a ban on harvesting egg-bearing females and baby lobsters during the spawning period.
