No, this is not an image of Indonesia’s finance minister and a TV presenter supporting opposition presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on February 21, 2019 at 10:45
  • 4 min read
  • By AFP Indonesia

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Posts on Facebook are sharing a photo claiming to show Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani and TV presenter Najwa Shihab supporting Prabowo Subianto’s presidential bid by making a two-finger salute. The posts are using the photo out of context: it was taken in 2017 at a cultural event that had nothing to do with Subianto nor politics.

One of the posts is this January 14, 2019, entry that has been shared hundreds of times and has a caption that translates in English to: “How about this one? The ship is sinking. They raise the two-finger salute #2019PrabowoSandi”.

Screenshot of the misleading post.

Subianto is the sole opposition candidate to President Joko Widodo in national elections in April. Raising two fingers has become a sign of support for Subianto because he is number two on the ballot in the elections. Here is a story on the ballot numbers.

#2019PrabowoSandi is a popular hashtag for Subianto and his vice presidential running mate, Sandiaga Uno.

The text overlay in the misleading photo of Mulyani and Shihab translates to English as: “The ship is sinking, captain. The crews are starting to find rescue by jumping to another ship”.

The photo was also used in the same misleading context here on the Facebook page of “PRABOWO - SANDI #PAS UNTUK INDONESIA” (PRABOWO - SANDI #FIT FOR INDONESIA) on December 21, 2018.

AFP’s examination using Google Reverse Image found that the image is genuine but was taken in 2017 at a literary festival sponsored by Indonesia’s finance ministry.

Shihab shared the photo to her Instagram and Facebook page on September 5, 2017. In the caption, she said “At the Literacy Festival at the finance ministry building with Ms. Sri Mulyani Indrawati. We exchanged stories about our favourite books.”

Below is her Instagram post.

 

Below is her Facebook post.

The finance ministry on September 5, 2017, also shared a poster of the event to its official Facebook page. The post and its image said Shihab was one of the speakers attending the event.  

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