Ahok haters claim he bought thousands of flower boards for himself, florists and reality debunk their conspiracy

One of the 1,000+ flower boards thanking Ahok outside of City Hall today. This one says it is from Universitas Indonesia’s Faculty of Law 1993 (except for those that are intolerant). Photo: Mohamad Guntur Romli‏ (@GunRomli) / Twitter
One of the 1,000+ flower boards thanking Ahok outside of City Hall today. This one says it is from Universitas Indonesia’s Faculty of Law 1993 (except for those that are intolerant). Photo: Mohamad Guntur Romli‏ (@GunRomli) / Twitter

Despite his unofficial defeat in last week’s Jakarta election, Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama’s detractors simply won’t leave the sitting governor alone.

Numerous hoax stories have been circulating on social media, calling into question the authenticity of the thousands of flower boards (2,700 according to latest reports, with an estimated total cost of Rp 1.3 billion) that people have been sending to City Hall to console Ahok after his defeat or to thank him for his service to the city.

Chief among those hoaxes is a conspiracy theory that Ahok ordered all of the flower boards himself for vanity purposes, or that they were actually ordered before the election to congratulate the incumbent on his expected victory, but their messages were changed following his defeat.

Even Deputy House Speaker Fadli Zon, who have been at the forefront of movements to criminalize Ahok for blasphemy, supported the completely baseless flower board conspiracy theories, calling them “cheap image building” by Ahok.

(One thing’s for sure, it’s highly unlikely that Trump fanboy Fadli Zon will ever receive the same kind of love from his supporters regardless of how hard he tries to build up his image.)

Ahok himself denied that he ordered the flower boards, explaining that the accusation was started by a screenshot of a fake Whatsapp chat in which Ahok supposedly made the order to an unidentified florist.

“The people who make those (fake chats), what do they want from me?” Ahok said, as quoted by Tempo.

Reporters have tracked down several florists who made the flower boards for Ahok, and what they said effectively quashed any lingering conspiracy theories about the flower boards.

“Here, people order [the flower boards] on short notice. Nobody orders them way in advance,” said a florist in Rawa Belong, West Jakarta today, as quoted by Detik.

“There were orders [for flower boards] on Saturday. The orders picked up after the media reported on the flower boards at City Hall,” said another florist.

Ferry, who works for a shop called Lucky Florist, said he sent 90 flower boards to Balai Kota on Tuesday and had received 15 more orders from separate individuals today, including two from Papua.

While Ahok’s haters may claim insanely elaborate conspiracy theory about the coordinated purchase of thousands of flower boards, what do they make about the hundreds of Ahok fans who have been flooding City Hall day after day in order to wish him well? Well, we’d expect those naysayers to say that these people were just paid to praise Ahok, unlike the protesters at certain political/religious rallies who were totally there based on their own convictions, and not for money or nasi bungkus.



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