Despite being one of Indonesia’s biggest conservative political parties, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) has had several of its members caught violating the party’s core values.
PKS is famously anti-pornography, having submitted Indonesia’s controversial anti-pornography bill, which eventually became law in 2008. They are also also strongly against LGBT rights, with their politicians speaking out against sexual minorities whenever the topic arises in Indonesia, such as when a party leader claimed Indonesia is undergoing an “LGBT emergency” following the arrest of 141 men at a “gay party” in Jakarta recently.
An understanding of PKS political agenda is necessary to understand why so many Indonesian netizens find a recent Twitter gaffe made by a PKS politician so hilariously hypocritical.
Indonesian media outlet Detik today reported that PKS politician and current MP Refrizal was caught liking a tweet posted by an account named ‘Video Gay Bapak’ (mister’s gay videos) recently. A screenshot of his like for the tweet circulated online with many netizens pointing out its apparent hypocrisy and prompting the politician to tweet an apology yesterday.
Saya menyampaikan prmohonan maaf sbesar-bsarny pd netizen atas "likes" video yg mmbuat heboh….(1)
— refrizalskb (@refrizalskb) July 3, 2017
I express my deepest apologies to netizens for the “like” for the video that caused this scandal.
…saya tdk mngetahui kjadian persisny sperti apa, saya pastikan kejadian tsb bukan kesengajaan, terimakasih (2)
— refrizalskb (@refrizalskb) July 3, 2017
I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I can assure you it was not intentional, thank you.
Other than those tweets, Refrizal has not been available for comment. His like for the gay post has also disappeared, and he has today continued retweeting and liking posts on Twitter containing conservative viewpoints, including anti-LGBT comments.
To be fair to Refrizal, it’s easy to be caught unintentionally doing something incriminating. Just ask his fellow PKS politician Arifinto, who was famously caught watching a porn video on his tablet during a parliamentary session in 2011. His excuse? The video was attached in an email and he opened it because he was curious.
Refrizal could also perhaps take a cue from PKS politician and former IT Minister Tifatul Sembiring, who was caught following a pornographic Twitter account in 2014. He claimed that he accidentally tapped the follow button of an account containing pornography, which he said had been forwarded to him as a complaint by a citizen.
