Public Demands Data Sources, Luhut Refuses To Be Transparent, Rocky Gerung: Half Of Indonesia's Population Wants Elections To Be Postponed? Absurd!

JAKARTA - The claim of the Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, that there are 110 million social media residents who want the 2024 General Election (Pemilu) to be postponed, has been criticized by political observer Rocky Gerung.

Rocky doubts that it is impossible for almost half of Indonesia's population to talk about politics, especially about extending the term of office of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi).

Rocky considered Luhut's claim to be a justification for his earlier attempt to conclude that the 2024 election was postponed.

"I think Pak Luhut's way of thinking is not inductive but deductive, meaning that the hypothesis or conclusion has been made and then justified," he said, quoted by VOI from the Rocky Gerung Official YouTube account, Wednesday, March 16.

Rocky said that Luhut's statement about the existence of big data containing hundreds of millions of Twitter social media residents wanting an extension of the president's term was easily refuted.

In addition to questioning the number of netizens who want President Jokowi's term to be extended, smartphone users in Indonesia, who are the majority of the younger generation, are currently busy with activities at school. They are facing the National Examination, continued Rocky, so that political discussion is not the main focus of the younger generation.

"Because from the start we knew the data was easy to refute, especially since we think half of Indonesians talking about politics is a bit absurd, actually, if we monitor our millennials who want their final exams, they won't talk about politics, those who are already students, want to finish talking about startups. It doesn't have anything to do with politics, we can easily find out where the talks are not really political hype," he said.

Luhut's big data claim, which is not accompanied by a data source, has also invited a number of parties to brand the data "a lie". Until now, Luhut has not wanted to be transparent about the source of the data.

"And that invites La Nyalla or an emprit drone to do a counter analysis," he added.

Rocky's remarks about a number of parties have raised questions about Luhut's claim and have tried to examine the source of the data, which is true. Ismail Fahmi, a social media researcher who is also the founder of Drone Emprit, did some research on this.

After being researched with an emprit drone, Fahmi denied that 110 million Twitter netizens were in agreement with one vote in favor of President Jokowi's power being extended. Fahmi assessed that the truth of the data was impossible.

"Impossible!! There are 110 million Indonesian social media users who talk about extending their tenure. Dara Drone Emprit, the most chatty Twitter user about this issue, only 10 thousand are still talking about tenure," said Ismail Fahmi, via his Twitter account- her, @ismailfahmi, not too long ago.

As is known, apart from Luhut, the extension of the presidential term was voiced by political party officials. On average, the reasons for the party elite agreeing to postpone the 2024 election are based on public aspirations.

Those who agreed that the election was postponed were the General Chair of the PKB Muhaimin Iskandar alias Cak Imin, the General Chairperson of Golkar, Airlangga Hartarto and the Chairman of the National Mandate Party (PAN), Zulkifli Hasan. All three are from parties that support President Jokowi's government.