Presidential Staff Office Clarifies On Environment Issue Excluded From Jokowi’s Speech

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Presiden Joko Widodo. Foto: greeners.co

Jakarta (Greeners) – Following recent political speech made by Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo after being re-elected for another term, 2019-2024, on 14 July 2019, which did not mention anything about environment issues, Indonesia’s green watchdogs consider the gesture as bad projection for the future of the country’s environmental state and humanity.

Boy Even Sembirin, Manager of Policy Assessment of Indonesian Forum for the Environment or WALHI, five steps of the Indonesia’s Vision by Jokowi sided on business interests or investment, instead of people’s welfare.

“The visions are back steps. Infrastructure, human resources, investment, bureaucratic reform, and state budget allocation are leading to massive increase of investments. The first vision of government’s working plan for infrastructure means to boost investment,” said Sembiring in a press conference in Jakarta on Tuesday (16/07/2019).

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People should be the subject who can manage their own resources under the policies that bring protection of lands managed by them.

“If that is the situation, it will bring concerns into the people, because there is nothing about environment issues in the Jokowi’s Vision,” he said. “Furthermore, it shows that his political promises documents are contradictory, between humanity and environment versus investment.”

Khalisah Khalid, chief of Politics Desk of WALHI, said that environment condition is being weakened in the future because of massive destruction, without any good policies to support improvements.

Kiri ke Kanan: Yuyun Harmono Manager Kampanye Walhi, Khalisah Khalid Kepala Desk Politik WALHI, Roy Evan Sembiring Manajer Kajian Kebijakan Eksekutif Nasional Walhi/Foto: Dewi Purningsih/www.greeners.co

“We are worried, if the government is not critical about environment issues in the future, destruction will come. The irony is regulations to protect the people and environment are not going anywhere, such as indigenous peoples bill and water bill,” said Khalid.

Meanwhile, Abetnego Tarigan, expert staff of the Presidential Staff Office, said that there’s no need for such concerns related to the winning speech. The visions mentioned by the president were crucial issues need to be accelerated and there were more significant efforts to be achieved.

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“It was just to underline which ones needed for quick progress and stressing out in the context of moving to the future. I also received critics and tried to convince all parties that the issues not mentioned [in the speech] are not forgotten. All sectors that we’re trying to fight are on track,” he said to Greeners via phone on Wednesday (17/07/2019).

Furthermore, he said the environment issues will be included in the Mid-Term National Development Planning, which will be passed by early of January 2020.

“All sectors are being processed. Pak Moeldoko had sent letters related to president’s promises into the planning. All sectors will be included at the planning, I am working on it,” he said adding that not all should be mentioned in the speech, the important thing is that all documents will be on track, so it will not be just issue but also implementation.

“We will see at the Presidential Speech on August 16th, after that there will be inaugural speech. Those two speeches need to have more stressing on things need to be concerns,” he said.

Reports by Dewi Purningsih

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