No, this video does not show Indonesia’s president handing out free food just before 2019 elections

This article is more than one year old.
Published on March 13, 2019 at 10:00
1 min read
By AFP Indonesia

A video that has been watched hundreds of times on Facebook purportedly shows Indonesian president Joko Widodo handing out free food to citizens in the run-up to April’s presidential election. The claim is false: the video was posted online more than two years ago and has no connection to the 2019 polls.

The misleading video can be seen here where it has been viewed 536 times since it was posted on Facebook on March 4.

The 1-minute, 35-second clip shows Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, greeting local officials who are distributing bags filled with staple foods -- rice, cooking oil, sugar and tea -- to residents of Bogor, near Jakarta.

Widodo is also seen shaking hands with some local people.

Below is a screenshot of the video. Jokowi is wearing a white shirt:

Screenshot of the misleading post.

The post’s translated caption reads: “The president hands out staple foods in his capacity as an incumbent candidate. Those who received the gifts may be able to eat all of this food within five days, but after that, they’ll be fooled for the next five years. Do you really want that? A president’s duty isn’t to hand out food…but to ensure that the price of staple foods remains affordable... Do you understand?”

AFP ran keyframes from the video obtained using verification tool InVid through a Google Reverse Image and Yandex search.

The results of the Yandex search can be seen here.

The misleading video has been taken from this June 28, 2016 report by Indonesian media outlet Tribunnews.

Below is the video report on the official Tribunnews YouTube channel, which has more than 500,000 subscribers:

The report is headlined “In a small alleyway, President Jokowi distributes Islamic New Year gifts to residents of Pulo Geulis village”.

The Tribun video was posted online June 28, 2016, more than two years before Widodo announced his re-election bid in August 2018.

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