No, this TV news clip does not show Indonesia’s president proposing an election re-run

This article is more than one year old.
Published on May 13, 2019 at 08:30
2 min read
By AFP Indonesia

A photo of a TV interview with Indonesian President Joko Widodo has been shared tens of thousands of times in a Facebook post that claims he said he would agree to an election rerun “if needed”. This claim is misleading; the president said in a televised interview that voting may have to be repeated in some polling stations that experienced problems during the April 17 elections.

The image was shared to Facebook in this post dated April 23, 2019 – six days after Indonesia held its elections – which has been shared more than 19,000 times since.

The president, popularly known as Jokowi, ran in Indonesia's presidential election on April 17, 2019, against his sole challenger, Prabowo Subianto. Here is an AFP report about the polls.

The post’s lengthy caption says in part: “Why are we going to have an election rerun?? We do not need a rerun, provided that all votes recapitulations from polling stations, districts, regencies, provinces and national levels are done honestly and openly.”

Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:

Screenshot of the misleading Facebook post

The logo of Indonesian broadcaster iNews TV can be seen on the top left-hand side of the image. The logo of iNews’ evening news programme “iNews Malam” also appears in the photo next to a blue banner with Indonesian-language text that translates to English as: “IF NEEDED, THE ELECTIONS CAN BE RE-RUN”.

In a playlist called “iNews Malam” on iNews’ official YouTube channel, AFP found this video which shows Jokowi wearing the same blue shirt giving an interview to the broadcaster regarding the latest elections:

The image used in the misleading post matches the original YouTube video at the timestamp 1:08.

Below is a picture comparing the Facebook image with a screenshot of the YouTube video:

The original YouTube video is headlined: “In response to the false data input, Jokowi: voting can be redone in problematic polling stations - iNews Malam 23/04”, a reference to the date the clip was posted on YouTube April 23, 2019.

In the original video, the president does not propose or agree to re-do the entire election if needed, but says the vote needs to be re-done only in some polling stations where irregularities have been discovered.

At 1:03, Jokowi says: “ Let us go back to the existing mechanism. If in one polling station needs a repeat, just repeat. There is a mechanism. There is the regulation.”

iNews editor-in-chief Yadi Hendriana told AFP on April 26, 2019, the image in the misleading Facebook post is “not contextual and is false.”

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