TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - NGO Sawit Watch along with a number of civil society organizations filed a public lawsuit against President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo and Trade Minister Muhammad Lutfi on Thursday, June 2, 2022, for failing to address the scarcity and high price of cooking oil.

The advocacy team did not deny the fact that the government made efforts to address the issues as claimed by the presidential special staff member for legal affairs, Dini Purwono, in response to the lawsuit.

“However, the government tends to change policies and in fact, these efforts fail to address the problem of price affordability at the consumer level,” said Advocacy Manager of the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (ELSAM) Muhammad Busyrol Fuad on Tuesday, June 7, 2022.

Fuad cited an example; the revocation of the Trade Ministerial Regulation No. 6 of 2022 concerning the highest retail price (HET) for cooking oil through the Trade Ministerial Regulation No. 11 of 2022. The policy revocation, he recalled, was sufficient to answer issues on the availability of the basic commodity.

“But it caused prices to soar, following the market mechanism,” Fuad said.

He argued that the lawsuit is actually the civil society’s effort to encourage governance improvements. Thus, the government does not need to worry if they have the same enthusiasm to help improve the governance of cooking oil in a bid to prevent this issue from recurring.

“This is very ironic given that Indonesia is the largest palm oil producer in the world,” said Fuad.

FAJAR PEBRIANTO

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