Surakarta mayor and vice president-elect Gibran Rakabuming Raka (centre) talks with residents of Pasar Manggis subdistrict, Setiabudi, South Jakarta, on July 3, 2024. - Antara
JAKARTA: Surakarta Mayor Gibran Rakabuming Raka faced a barrage of criticism from a councillor of his former party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), at a hearing at the city legislature on Monday (July 8), some three months before he takes office as the country’s next vice president.
On Monday, Gibran was supposed to present his reports regarding existing changes in this year’s city budget and proposals for next year’s budget at the hearing at the Surakarta Legislative Council. But he was interrupted by politician Honda Hendarto from the PDI-P, which holds the majority of seats at the legislature, just before the mayor presented his arguments.
Honda questioned whether Gibran had sent the complete documents regarding the changes to the 2024 budget and how the budget was spent so far to support his arguments.
“I don’t see the documents here, which are important bases to continue discussing [budget allocation],” Honda said during the meeting, which was livestreamed on YouTube.
“Similar occurrences have taken place several times in the past,” he said. “[...] Don’t let this become a habit.”
The interruption was brief but forced the meeting to be suspended for several minutes.
Gibran, the oldest son of outgoing President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, is currently not a member of any party.
He parted ways with the PDI-P after he ran for vice president on the ticket of the rival Gerindra Party and three other parties in February and won the election alongside president-elect Prabowo Subianto, running against PDI-P candidate Ganjar Pranowo and the other unsuccessful ticket of Anies Baswedan.
Monday's meeting at the local legislature resumed with Gibran presenting his reports. But after Gibran’s presentation, Honda once again insisted that he had yet to receive the documents, demanding deputy speaker Sugeng Riyanto of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), who presided over the meeting, to postpone the discussion altogether.
Sugeng said the documents were in fact ready to be copied and distributed. He later suspended the meeting for another 25 minutes following a similar request from another politician so the meeting could ensure the documents were ready.
The meeting then decided for the council to formally begin discussing the budget for next year in the near future.
Gibran told reporters after the meeting that: “I’d like to thank Honda for his suggestion”.
“This is for our future evaluation to prevent the incident from repeating – although the documents in question actually were there already [at the time of the meeting],” Gibran said, as quoted from Radio Republic Indonesia.
Gibran was an entrepreneur who made his political debut in late 2019 when he joined the PDI-P.
He ran for Surakarta mayor a year later on the ticket of the party. He is serving the mayoral post until his inauguration as the vice president in October of this year.
During the February presidential election, Gibran and the eventual presidential winner Prabowo won by a landslide in Surakarta, one of the PDI-P’s strongholds. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
