The Indonesian military should stay out of politics and remain loyal to the government, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said on Thursday in an apparent rebuke over contentious statements by the country's top general.
Military chief Gen Gatot Nurmantyo has stirred controversy in the past month with warnings of a renewed communist threat to Indonesia and a claim that a non-military organisation was trying to import thousands of weapons.
In a speech to a parade marking the military's 72nd anniversary, Jokowi said the armed forces are a national institution that should stay above politics and not be fragmented by narrow interests.
The military “should always ensure its political neutrality in the current democratic era,” he said.
Indonesia's army retreated from politics after the fall of dictator Suharto in 1998 ushered in democracy, but nearly two decades later, a role limited to national defence is not fully accepted among officers or the rank-and-file. The army has tried to inch back into civilian areas and resented the police's leading role in counter-terrorism.
Jokowi's predecessor as president was a former general, as was his main rival in the 2014 presidential election, Prabowo Subianto.
Nurmantyo, who local media say might harbour ambitions to run for president in 2019, last month attended an Islamic political party event where he warned that communists, a boogeyman frequently invoked by Indonesian conservatives, were a renewed threat.
Earlier in the month, the four-star general claimed that a government institution tried to import 5,000 guns “on behalf” of Jokowi. The president's top security minister, however, said that the national intelligence service had ordered several hundred rifles from a state-owned weapons company for training purposes.
Thursday's parade in the coastal West Java city of Cilegon comprised nearly 6,000 soldiers and Indonesia's most modern imported weaponry.
In a speech at the parade, Nurmantyo said soldiers are sworn to protect the Indonesian people and obey the president.
Indonesia’s notorious traffic congestion was on display for the world Thursday after the country’s president was forced to walk two kilometers through the scorching heat to attend a military parade.
The country’s traffic nightmares were aptly illustrated when President Joko Widodo had to walk more than two kilometers to attend a ceremony marking the 72nd anniversary of the Indonesian military’s founding.
Widodo and senior government officials were held up by gridlock as they approached the military parade in Cilegon, a port city about two-and-a-half hours drive from the capital Jakarta, the presidential palace said.
ADVERTISEMENT
After a 30-minute wait, “the president then decided from inside the car that he would walk,” Widodo’s guard Ili Dasili said in a statement.
National police chief Tito Karnavian, who was also stuck in the jam, joined the president.
Video footage shows the president walking with a phalanx of security personnel while spectators yell and chant his name.
Widodo’s unorthodox entrance wasn’t lost on social media users, who questioned why the leader of Southeast Asia’s largest economy was compelled to walk to the event.
“How come the president walked for two kilometers to the military anniversary location, why didn’t they give him the privilege of vacating the road or taking him in a helicopter?”
