A video of a woman in South Sulawesi campaigning against President Joko Widodo, allegedly by spreading falsehoods about the incumbent, has gone viral recently, just one week after three women were arrested on suspicion of doing the same in West Java.
The woman in the video, who appears to be middle-aged and has yet to be identified, is seen sitting in somebody’s living room and persuading the homeowner to vote for presidential challenger Prabowo Subianto and his running mate, Sandiaga Uno.
The woman can be seen wearing an outfit adorned with prints of the logo for the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) — the golden twin crescent moons and a cotton plant — around the sleeve bands and on the lower part of her shirt. PKS is an Islam-based political party that is part of the coalition of opposition parties that are backing the Prabowo-Sandiaga ticket in April’s election.
In what appears to be smear against the incumbent, the woman says Jokowi will remove pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) and religious studies in schools if he gets re-elected. The homeowner appears to be surreptitiously filming her making the statement.
“If we choose Prabowo, we think about the fate of our religion, our children even though we don’t enjoy it. But how about the next five years or 10 years, do we want to see religious studies being removed by Jokowi along with his ministers?” she can be heard saying in the video.
“It’s one of their programs. First, remove the religious studies at schools. Then, their plan is to replace pesantren. They will be turned into public schools and there are many ways to do this,” she continues.
Before she could go on with her explanation, the homeowner cuts her off mid-sentence and asks her permission to leave the house in a dialect that appears to be native to South Sulawesi.
The Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) and the Elections Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu) of the South Sulawesi capital of Makassar both say they will investigate the video.
PKS’ Politics, Law and Security Secretary Suhud Alynudin said that his party was not previously aware of the woman and suggested that anyone could obtain the party’s uniform easily.
“We forbid campaign methods that are against the rules and ethics, such as spreading hoaxes and black campaign. If anyone does the campaign outside of our principles, we can confirm that they are not one of us,” Suhud told Detik today.
Last week, police in West Java named three women — all in their 40s — as suspects for appearing and uploading a video in which they spread unsubstantiated rumors that Jokowi and his running mate Ma’ruf Amin winning in April’s election would be detrimental for Muslims in the country, specifically because he would legalize gay marriage and ban the Muslim call to prayer.
The women have been charged with hate speech under Indonesia’s Information and Electronic Transactions Act (UU ITE), and, if convicted, could each face up to six years in prison for deliberately spreading false or misleading information online.
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