Cooking Oil Crisis, Rizal Ramli Sentil Airlangga: The Coordinating Minister For The Economy Should Be Busy But Copras-Capres

Coordinating Minister for the Economy Airlangga Hartarto. (Antara/Nova Wahyudi)

JAKARTA - Former Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs Rizal Ramli asked Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto to focus on helping Trade Minister Muhammad Lutfi resolve the cooking oil crisis in the country.

In accordance with his main duties and functions as the relevant minister, Rizal hopes that Airlangga will devote his energies to this problem that makes people difficult. The matter of Airlangga's steps in the national political arena should be put aside first.

"This should be the task of the Coordinating Minister for the Economy, but he is busy with copras and presidential candidates," Rizal Ramli told VOI, Thursday, March 17.

If this problem can be resolved, then this success will become Airlangga's capital in the national political contestation. Rizal said that his constituents would remember Airlangga's name if he ran in the presidential election.

"If Airlangga can finish it, this is a great campaign material for him. If he fixes this problem of price scarcity, he will become a hero, he doesn't have to put up billboards, people will remember," he said.

However, Rizal said, Airlangga did the opposite. His obligation to resolve the shortage of cooking oil supply was not fully carried out.

In addition, the Minister of Trade, Lutfi, is considered Rizal as not having the capacity to solve the problem, so that the cooking oil crisis that has occurred since the end of 2021 is still felt by the people to this day.

"But what happened, his main job was to clean up the economy, he didn't do it, he was busy installing billboards, he was busy nyopras, and the trade minister was just slacking off," he added.

As a result of the performance of Airlangga and Trade Minister Lutfi, Rizal advised President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) to take a stand. Jokowi can replace the two with someone who is an expert in solving the problem of scarcity that has spread to soaring cooking oil prices.

If Jokowi ignores that, according to Rizal, inevitably the head of state must go down the mountain, resolve this protracted problem.

"Well, the choice is simple, Jokowi replaces his ministers, or Jokowi intervenes directly. If you can't afford to be mindful, just step back, give someone else a chance, who can solve Indonesia's problems. That's why it's so troublesome!" said Rizal.

On the same occasion, Rizal regretted the steps taken by the Minister of Trade Lutfi so far. He was disappointed that Indonesia, which is the largest palm oil exporter in the world, was slow in resolving the cooking oil crisis.

Rizal explained that while dealing with this crisis, the Minister of Trade was known to have blamed people for panic buying amid the scarcity of cooking oil. The situation has not changed, people are still willing to wait in long lines to get cooking oil.

According to Rizal, the Trade Minister should have caught the trigger for the problem because of the scarcity of cooking oil supplies. Stocks of bulk cooking oil that are scarce in the market trigger people to flock to packaged cooking oil, causing panic buying, not hoarding.

"Then it was blamed by the people, I was annoyed, when he said it was the people who hoarded. The majority of our people are daily workers, their income is not every day, they are not employees. So it's impossible to hoard cooking oil. Until yesterday I saw, there were still queues for kilometers That kind of problem can't be solved," he concluded.