Luhut's Response To Data Claims On Election Delays, Puan Maharani: PDIP Has Its Own Data Which Is Also Big

Speaker of the House of Representatives Puan Maharani (Photo: Instagram)

JAKARTA - The Speaker of the Indonesian House of Representatives, Puan Maharani, responded to the statement by Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan who claimed data on people's aspirations regarding the postponement of the 2024 General Election. Luhut stated that the public was not interested in the election and wanted a postponement.

Questioning that, the chairman of the PDIP DPP said his party has its own data regarding people's aspirations regarding elections. However, according to Puan, the data held by PDIP does not include the public's perception of the postponement of the 2024 election.

"We from PDIP have our own data and it doesn't include the data submitted," said Puan at the DPR Building, Tuesday, March 15.

Puan added that the data held by PDIP is also 'big'. However, he did not continue the meaning of the large PDIP data. "Our data is also big," he said. Previously, in a conversation on Deddy Corbuzier's YouTube podcast, Coordinating Minister Luhut explained that his party had big data which recorded public aspirations on social media regarding the 2024 Election.

"Because of this, we have big data, I want to see, we have big data, from that big data, we grab around 110 million. Yes, 110 million, various kinds, Facebook, all kinds, because people are on Twitter, about 110 million people," said Luhut.

From this data, Luhut explained that the lower middle class wanted a calm socio-political condition. The people, said Luhut, do not want political noise and prefer economic conditions to be improved.

"In the middle to lower class, basically we want to be calm, we want to talk about the economy, we don't want it to be like yesterday. Yesterday we had a toothache with a camphor, cebong lah, kadrun, that's not good. That's how it is," he explained. Still from the big data claimed by Luhut, he said the Indonesian people criticized the Rp 100 trillion fund for the 2024 election. The hundreds of trillions of funds were indeed proposed by the KPU to the DPR-government.

"Nowadays like this, he said, we are trying to catch it from the public (from these data), yes it says we want to spend more than Rp 100 trillion to vote, this is a situation like this, what are you doing for the presidential election and regional elections, right? simultaneously," he said.

Luhut said that the party's reluctance to hold the 2024 general election should have arrested the public's aspiration regarding the reluctance to hold the 2024 election. According to him, the party should seriously consider the aspiration to postpone the election.

"Yes, that's what the people said. Well, this niche is in the Democratic Party, there is the Gerindra Party, PDIP, there is PKB, there is Golkar, there are niches everywhere. Yes, he will see which one hear our voices."

Luhut claims that there are many examples of other countries delaying elections or extending presidential terms. However, Luhut emphasized President Jokowi's stance regarding the discourse on postponing the election and extending the term of office, namely remaining obedient to the constitution.