JAKARTA: Former president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo (pic) is set to challenge two lawsuits against him this week pertaining to the authenticity of his academic credentials and the production of locally made car brand Esemka during his administration.
The two lawsuits were filed at the Surakarta District Court in Central Java, Jokowi’s hometown, earlier this month in the span of less than a week.
The first lawsuit was filed on April 9 by 19-year-old Surakarta resident Aufaa Luqmana, who accused the former president of wanprestasi (default) of his promise regarding the production target for Esemka.
Less than a week after Aufaa submitted the lawsuit, the Surakarta District Court received another one from legal practitioner Muhammad Taufiq on April 14. He sued Jokowi for allegedly falsifying his high school and university diplomas, which he insisted rendered Jokowi’s mayoral administration in Surakarta between 2005 and 2012 illegal.
Taufiq also sued the Surakarta office of the General Elections Commission, the city’s SMAN 6 state senior high school and Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta.
Jokowi reportedly graduated from the high school in 1980, then began his studies at the university’s School of Forestry in the same year before graduating in 1985.
Jokowi has appointed lawyers for the hearings of the lawsuits. They have denied any accusations of wrongdoing by the former president.
The Surakarta District Court scheduled the first hearings for both lawsuits on Thursday at 10 a.m. Jokowi said that he was “ready” to prove himself in court.
Taufiq claimed that several aspects of Jokowi’s diplomas looked off, such as “inconsistent data” between what was written in the certificate and the dates when SMAN 6 and UGM’s carpentry programme were established.
The lawsuits are not the first time for Jokowi to be hit with accusations surrounding his academic achievements. The earliest accusations surfaced in 2019, when a Facebook user named Umar Khalid Harahap claimed that Jokowi’s high school diploma was fake.
The police rejected the claim and arrested Umar on a charge of spreading fake news. Two other lawsuits emerged in 2022 and 2023, filed by writer Bambang Tri Mulyono and activist Eggi Sudjana, respectively.
But lawyers for Bambang, who wrote a controversial book claiming to uncover Jokowi’s identity, retracted the lawsuit, citing his legal status as a hate speech suspect. Meanwhile, the court ruled that Eggi’s lawsuit would not go to trial.
Both SMA 6 and UGM have defended the legitimacy of Jokowi’s diplomas, asserting that the former president had completed his studies accordingly. Calls grew for Jokowi to present his diplomas to the public after only their photos circulated online.
The former president ended up showing them to a few journalists on April 16, but restricting them from taking any photos or videos of the diplomas. “I have no obligation to show them,” Jokowi said on April 16, as quoted by kompas.com, adding that he would only show them if authorities instructed him to.
UGM deputy rector Wening Udasmoro said the university would show the documents if a court ordered it to do so, as reported by Antara.
Aufaa, the plaintiff in the Esemka lawsuit, has accused Jokowi, former vice president Ma’ruf Amin and the car’s manufacturer of failing to make the domestically produced vehicle available to the public.
“[Jokowi] was unable to fulfill his promise in terms of mass production and marketing of Esemka cars,” Aufaa said on April 9, as quoted by kompas.com. The local car brand made headlines after Jokowi, when he was still Surakarta mayor, decided to use it as his official vehicle.
The first Esemka car was produced by students of SMK 1 Trucuk state vocational high school in Klaten, Central Java, in 2011. Jokowi also inaugurated the opening of an Esemka factory in Boyolali, Central Java, in 2019
But the cars were never mass produced, and the company’s state of production remains unclear. Aufaa is the son of Indonesian Anti-Corruption Community (MAKI) head Boyamin Saiman.
His brother, Almas Tsaqibbirru, filed a judicial review petition against a provision on presidential candidates’ age limits at the Constitutional Court in 2023. The court ruled in his favour, which paved the way for Jokowi’s eldest son Gibran Rakabuming Raka to run in, and eventually win, the 2024 presidential election.
Aufaa also filed a judicial review request with the Constitutional Court against an article in the Regional Elections Law on minimum ages for regional leader candidates to prevent Jokowi’s youngest son Kaesang Pangarep to run in the 2024 regional polls. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
