TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Presidential candidate of the upcoming 2019 Indonesian election, Prabowo Subianto, issued yet another controversial statement which has gone viral. He claimed that Indonesians are not earning enough money likening them to impoverished nations, such as Haiti.

Prabowo said that the government has made an economic blunder that has driven a portion of Indonesia’s wealth offshore.

“If this continues to go on, Indonesia will continue to be impoverished,” said the opposition party’s candidate in his speech at the Majelis Tafsir Al Quran (MTA) headquarters in Solo on Sunday, December 23.

“We, Indonesians, are on par with African impoverished countries such as Rwanda, Haiti, and small islands like Kiribati, which we don’t even know where it’s located,” said Prabowo Subianto. He said that it is regrettable since Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the world.

His statement which mentioned Haiti as a country in the African continent later went viral and became a topic of discussion and ridicule across social media platforms. It even went as far to drive the hashtag #Haiti into a trending topic on Twitter early this morning.

Many social media users pointed out the fact that Prabowo Subianto had failed to understand that Haiti is a country located in the Caribbean islands within the territory of the United States of America, unlike his speech which origins the country to an African state.

AHMAD RAFIQ (CONTRIBUTOR)