No, this is not a genuine report about the UN secretary-general congratulating Indonesian presidential hopeful Prabowo Subianto
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on May 7, 2019 at 11:15
- 2 min read
- By AFP Indonesia
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
This Facebook post dated April 26, 2019 contains a screenshot of the headline of a blog post above an image of the United Nations logo. The post also contains this link to a post published by wavienews.com on April 24, 2019.
The entire text of the blog post from wavienews.com has been copied into the Facebook post’s caption.
Below is a screenshot of the misleading Facebook post:
The first paragraph of the misleading Facebook post’s lengthy caption reads: “I got this from a friend’s wall. BTW, the UN is probably annoyed by Jokowi for being occasionally absent during UN meetings. If he cannot speak English, do not insist on becoming a president.. he better becomes a furniture maker.”
"Jokowi" refers to Indonesian president Joko Widodo. This is his official Twitter account.
In the second paragraph of the misleading Facebook post's caption, the UN secretary-general is referred to as “Pedro Coelho”.
In the image in the misleading Facebook post, the Indonesian-language headline translates to English as: “The UN secretary general congratulates Prabowo on being elected as Indonesian president”.
"Prabowo" refers to former military general Prabowo Subianto, a contender in Indonesia's 2019 presidential election. This is his official Twitter account.
The claim in the Facebook post and the wavienews.com blog post is false; nobody called Pedro Cuelho has ever served as secretary general of the UN.
Here is the list of past and present secretaries-generals on the UN’s official website.
Antonio Guterres was appointed as the UN secretary-general on October 13, 2016. Here is UN’s official report about Guterres’ appointment, which mentioned he would serve as the secretary-general until December 21, 2021. And here is his Twitter account.
President Joko Widodo is on course to win his second term in office after the 2019 presidential election, according to this AFP report and predictions from Indonesian pollsters, for example here, with final results due to be announced on May 22.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
