Reported To Bawaslu Because Of #PrabowoGibran's Tweet, Ministry Of Defense Affirms Again Admin Accidentally

Head of the Public Relations Bureau of the Secretariat General of the Ministry of Defense Brigadier General TNI Edwin Adrian Sumantha. BETWEEN/Genta Tenri Mawangi

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Defense appreciates the public's report to the Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) which suspects a violation of neutrality due to a tweet on the Ministry of Defense's official account on social media X.

Head of the Public Relations Bureau of the Secretariat General of the Ministry of Defense Brigadier General TNI Edwin Adrian Sumantha explained that public complaints related to elections were in accordance with the rules and were accommodated by Bawaslu. However, related to the tweet questioned, it was purely an unintentional mistake by the account manager (administrator).

"We appreciate the report. It was indeed accommodated in the mechanism for holding the 2024 General Election. We need to explain and reiterate that this happened because of the admin's accident (account manager, ed.) in squeezing the hashtag of choice on X (sugged tags) and the admin immediately corrected the error," said Edwin as quoted by ANTARA, Tuesday, January 23.

Edwin also straightened out various misleading information that said it was as if the tweet had been uploaded on purpose, and was broadcast for hours since it first aired on Sunday (21/1).

The Ministry of Defense, according to Edwin, immediately deleted the tweet and evaluated the performance of the account manager. The results of his evaluation, Edwin said that the Ministry of Defense employees who manage the account were also subject to administrative sanctions in the form of a strong warning for not being careful in carrying out their duties.

"We have evaluated and re-emphasized to all administrators of the Ministry of Defense's social media platform to be more careful in the publication process," said Edwin.

He emphasized that the Ministry of Defense remains neutral and committed to maintaining neutrality during the 2024 General Election.

"All Indonesian Ministry of Defense employees uphold neutrality," he said.

The Ministry of Defense's official social media account tweet last weekend was in the spotlight for including the hashtag #PrabowoGibran2024. However, the tweet was not long deleted.

The Ministry of Defense explained that the hashtag was accidentally uploaded because the account manager was not careful to re-examine his tweet.

Therefore, administrative sanctions were imposed on the Ministry of Defense employees who manage the official Ministry of Defense's account on social media X.

However, the tweet was questioned by a group of people who are members of the Community Coalition for the Clean Election. The coalition asked Bawaslu to examine alleged violations of neutrality in the tweet.