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JAKARTA – Former Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama has used YouTube as a platform to criticize bad bureaucracy, rent seeking and systematic inefficiency in Indonesian state-owned companies.
Speaking on the YouTube channel “Poin”, which has more than one million subscribers, Basuki, popularly known by his Chinese nickname Ahok, expressed his frustration at the management of the state oil company Pertamina for acquiring oil fields abroad with borrowed money. while ignoring potential business nationwide.
It also alleged that another state-owned company was trying to participate in the rental search.
Basuki, a political ally of President Joko Widodo, is the head of Pertamina’s board of commissioners, whose job it is to oversee the board of directors. He is also a member of the ruling Indonesian Democratic Struggle Party.
Pertamina is one of 140 state-controlled companies under the auspices of the Indonesian state business ministry.
Basuki said Indonesia should establish a super holding company for state-controlled companies, following the example of Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek.
“The Ministry of State-owned Enterprises should be dissolved … and (we should) have Indonesia Incorporation, like (Singapore) Temasek,” Basuki said in the six and a half minute video uploaded on Monday (September 14).
The former governor of Jakarta, who previously served as Joko’s deputy when the latter was governor of Jakarta, also pointed to another state-owned company that tried to charge Pertamina an excessive fee of Rs 500 billion (S $ 45.7 million). for a -in-a-paperless-office-project “.
“They are crazy. They asked for 500 billion rupees for a paperless process at Pertamina,” Basuki said.
“If they receive that amount of money, they would not have to work and instead could sleep happily for a long time,” he argued, comparing the company trying to get money from Pertamina to a python that has just swallowed a large prey. everything.
The Pertamina administration, Basuki said, had improperly ignored offers from private investors to work together to build oil refineries, which Indonesia urgently needs to reduce dependence on fuel imports.
He also said that Pertamina could have tapped at least 12 potential oil blocks for exploration domestically rather than venturing abroad and acquiring foreign assets.
The construction of refineries is a program that Mr. Joko wants Pertamina to carry out quickly.
Mr. Basuki also disagreed with the way in which low-performing senior Pertamina officials were fired from their respective positions, but continued to receive the same high salaries simply for seniority reasons.
Reform-minded Basuki fought corruption and improved health care when he was governor of Jakarta from 2014 to 2017. Under his leadership, the city administration had the most transparent annual spending budget, made accessible online, allowing the public to help monitor and detect any irregularities.
Basuki, who is a Christian of Chinese ethnic origin, was accused of blasphemy by political opponents, after he gave a speech in September 2016 that referred to a Qur’anic verse.
He had then argued that the verse had been misused to trick Jakarta residents into voting against him.
But he was found guilty and later sentenced to two years in prison for blasphemy in 2017.
After being released from prison, Basuki was appointed by Joko to take over as chief commissioner at Pertamina, one of the most strategic state-owned companies in the country that had often been plagued by inefficiency and corruption.
Known for his blunt remarks and relentless attitude toward underperforming public officials while in office, Basuki has faced resistance from some quarters within Pertamina.
The YouTube video posted on Monday has already garnered 1.2 million views. In it, Basuki said that those who resist him wrongly accuse him of creating disharmony and chaos in Pertamina, in an effort to overthrow him.
In response to Basuki’s video, Pertamina spokesman Fajriyah Usman told the news portal cnnindonesia.com that the company respects the statement made by Basuki, whose job it is to oversee the management of the company.
Ms. Usman added that the company is currently undergoing an internal restructuring to improve.
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