SBY paranoia claims over twin hotel bombings in Jakarta
Updated
Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhyono's leadership has been called into question after the President suggested he was the target of the deadly twin hotel bombings in Jakarta on Friday. At a press conference just hours after the terror attacks, President Yudhyono denounced the attackers as draculas and spreaders of death. He held up a photograph of himself which he said had been used as target practice and also suggested the bombings could be linked to alleged plots by rivals to overturn his re-election. Some observers have dismissed his comments as paranoia
Presenter: Claudette Werden
Speakers: Andi Mallarangeng, Indonesia Presidential advisor; Dr Greg Fealy, ANU Indonesia Politics Senior
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WERDEN: An editorial in the Jakarta Post described the President's comments as an excessive rant but the President's spokesman Andi Mallarangeng says SBY isn't backing down.
MALLARANGENG: The President made the statement as President, as head of state, head of government and that statement was proper response to the terrorist attack, the president asking the nation to unite and in that statement the President said we can not hastly accuse anybody, there is a rule of law and this is a democratic country but the President also asking the people to be careful, the President was also stating that there is an intelligence report and everything has to be investigated.
WERDEN: But some analysts say the President appeared to link political rivals including ex-Special Forces Commander Prabowo Subianto with the bombing.
MALLARANGENG: Well look at the transcript of the statement, President did not link anything, President stated, whether there's a link or no link let the police investigate and based on that investigation then we know whether there is a link or not, don't just ignore any possibilities.
WERDEN: What the President said at the press conference was that there were those who had in the past carried out crimes, murders, made people disappear and had maybe been able to slip away from the reach of the law. Indonesia expert Dr Greg Fealy has no doubt President Yudhyono was referring to Prabowo, the running mate of Megawati Sukarnoputri who was defeated in Indonesia's recent presidential poll.
FEALY: Yes I think that's reasonably clear, he didn't mention Prabowo by name but he certainly spoke in a way that would lead one to conclude that that's who he was referring to.
WERDEN: Prabowo has been accused of certain crimes in East Timor and Indonesia.
FEALY: Indeed he has and there's a good deal of evidence to support those accusations against him but in this case it's unlikely he's guilty of the crimes he's been accused of for the simple reason he has future political plans, he's looking very seriously at running for the Presidency again in 2014 and if it were to emerge that he had in anyway been involved in a subversive plot to overthrow the democratic election which is in effect what SBY was alleging, well that would completely destroy his political standing and he would have no prospect of being a serious candidate in 2014, so I think Prabowo has a compelling reason now not to engage in these kinds of black operations, quite a different position from when he was a military officer active in East Timor or Suharto's Indonesia.
WERDEN: Were you surprised that a normally friendly newspaper would come out so strongly against him in an editorial?
FEALY: That is a surprise because the Jakarta Post is normally very well disposed towards SBY and I think it shows the degree of concern in elite circles in Jakarta about how the president reacted, most people would have regarded SBY as a fairly steady figure in a crisis and instead he revealed himself to be more than a little paranoid and rather self indulgent and the language he used was also very I think ill-considered using terms such as draculas, that's a kind of behaviour we would have expected from Suharto in the last days of his presidency or someone like Abdulrrahman Wahid in his more eccentric moments
