Jokowi Attends a YouTuber’s Wedding, and I’m Really Disgusted
President Jokowi, disregarding the ongoing pandemic, attended Atta Halilintar’s wedding on Saturday.
Indonesia is still struggling against the pandemic. Numbers of cases and deaths are not getting much better compared to last year. The government keeps loosening the mitigation while the new variants loom large. Vaccination rate is not climbing fast and high enough to be finished this year, or even next year. Frontline workers are left fighting for their salaries that seem to never come. There are things yet to be paid attention to and solved.
Despite all that, President Jokowi is not doing anything meaningful now. In fact, it seems as if he has given up completely, borderline not caring at all. The only thing he does these days is spewing out rosy statements regarding the situation and only focusing on the vaccination, while completely ignoring the mitigation. Our country, if not going backwards, is terribly stagnant now. This makes me quite irritated, sometimes even livid. Other neighbouring countries, while also struggling, are doing better than us. So, why can’t we?
And while seemingly doing nothing for the pandemic, turns out the president still has an ample amount of time to do something else that is not related to the virus at all. It was on Saturday. There was a big wedding — it already sounds so wrong that there was a wedding in the pandemic — and Jokowi, against all the common sense, decided that it was urgent enough that he had to attend it. No, it was not the wedding of his relatives, nor his allies’ sons or daughters. It was, instead, the wedding of Atta Halilintar. And who is he that he suddenly became an urgent matter for the president? A YouTuber.
It might be quite peculiar and perplexing, but yes, you heard that right. The president, the leader of this country, in the middle of the pandemic, was willingly lending his precious time and changing his priorities — something that should have been used to fix all the pandemic problems instead — to the wedding of a lowly wannabe celebrity who is too thirsty for attention and sensations. Again, of all the time in the world, he chose this pandemic.
If that’s not peculiar and perplexing enough for you, the president was actually invited and went there due to the obnoxious fact that Atta had personally asked him to be his witness. Somehow, this lowly wannabe celebrity, with ease, managed to make the president — I’m not sure how else I can put it — his “subordinate”. The president came to that wedding also willingly to perform a “duty”, not for his people, not for me, but for Atta.
Upon hearing it, I felt really disgusted. Not irritated or livid anymore like when hearing him doing nothing — I’d really prefer he did that instead. I was simply really disgusted, and I still am. It’s perhaps the most disgusting thing a president of this country has ever done in my life, and I’m not exaggerating here. We are still reeling from the pandemic. People are still dying and suffering from it. People are out of jobs and not able to feed their families. And despite all that, the president still did it anyway. Despite all his rhetoric of staying at home, he did it anyway. Your lives, my life, mean less to him than literally being a slave to a silly YouTuber. If not disgusting, then I don’t know what it is.
And there’s also the issue of ethics here, which is just as disgusting. Even if he hadn’t done it in the pandemic, it would’ve been still heavily problematic. It was a for-profit event, with a TV station and its sponsors funded the whole procession in hope of cashing in on the appearance of Atta and his wife. Any president has no business attending this. It smells heavily of conflict of interest, profiteering, and even abuse of power in a way. Not only has Jokowi managed to disrespect his people, but also the office he’s currently in, stripping it of all its dignity.
To be fair, I do understand how close he has been to young personalities, especially the online ones. He’s been using them as sort of conduits to the youngsters out there to gain votes and bolster the support for his agenda. This also helps him create an image of a “cool” and “modern” politician, moulding his traits and behaviours into something that the youths can relate to.
But again, the pandemic is still here, and playing political games should not be high in anyone’s agenda, especially the leader himself. Politics won’t get you far. Politics kills. The only political thing you’ll gain is smearing your already broken image by being more offensive towards your constituents. Just look at Donald Trump and how he left America in a sorry state last year if you need an example. Or try Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil if you want something more extreme.
Even if what happened there was a political stunt, it really didn’t make sense at all. I know Atta has a lot of followers, but who or what was Jokowi trying to promote there? Certainly not him. He has been elected twice as president. I’m not sure it was for his son either. He has been elected in Solo, and he’s young enough not to worry about conduits. Perhaps his party? Young people don’t give a damn. They only notice the candidates anyway. Really, what was it for, then? All the belittling of our lives for nothing?
Worse, it might not be a political game at all. It might only be him taking the “moulding” to the extreme, cosying up with those adolescents far too long. Perhaps, what was at first just one of the tools in his political arsenal has actually become his life. Maybe deep down, he is not even a politician anymore, but merely a showman trying to stay relevant with his own circus, becoming hungry of attention and sensations, just like the person whose wedding he attended. If there’s even a bit of truth to it, that means our pandemic fate will be decided by the leadership of…a narcissistic clown? Let that sink in.
Whatever the reason is, once again, I’m just really disgusted. It’s very offensive towards the Indonesian people, especially the ones struggling the most and the ones actually dying. For now, I can only hope — I’m running out of that pretty soon — that our president will come around to the reality, the one where the pandemic is still raging in this country, where he hasn’t done much, where he needs to redeem his mistakes before it’s too late. Perhaps, he too can apologise to us along the way.
Hopefully.
And about Prabowo…I guess I feel the same way. Disgusted.
