TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsFact-checking the President
From million-rupiah shallots to unverified nuclear claims, President Prabowo Subianto's off-script habits are turning presidential rhetoric into viral punchlines - and putting the nation’s credibility on the line.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Set as preferred source
President Prabowo Subianto delivers his annual State of the Nation Address on Aug. 14 ahead of the country's Independence Day celebrations, in Jakarta. (AFP/Bay Ismoyo)
R
p 700,000 (US$40) to peel a kilogram of shallots. That was the eye-popping figure President Prabowo Subianto offered in his State of the Nation Address on Aug. 14, introducing a woman named Susanah from Bogor, West Java as proof that his welfare programs were working.
Social media did the math within minutes: at that rate, a modestly productive shallot peeler would out-earn a university professor or even a cabinet minister. It turned out Susanah was not a shallot peeler at all. She was a scrap-fabric seamstress earning closer to Rp 700 a day, well below the poverty line.
Somewhere between the briefing notes and the podium, both the number and the story became garbled beyond recognition.
Threads and X had a field day; comedians scarcely needed embellishment. The President had supplied the punchline himself.
What is striking is not only the error itself, but also the thinness of the response. Even days later, there was no formal written correction from the Presidential Palace.
The closest thing to an acknowledgment came verbally, and somewhat reluctantly, from Muhammad Qodari, head of the government's communications agency (Bakom), who told reporters it was simply a slip of the tongue: Rp 700 became Rp 700,000. He offered no explanation for the confusion over Susanah's actual profession.
A presidential adviser, meanwhile, urged the public to stop "frying" the clip, as if the problem were the attention rather than the inaccuracy. For a mistake broadcast live before the People’s Consultative Assembly, that is a remarkably thin response.
