The Truth Behind Jokowi's Zero Wildfire Claim
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18 February 2019 13:02 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The second presidential debate saw presidential hopeful Joko “Jokowi” Widodo claiming to have suppressed incidents involving wildfires for the past three years or since 2016.
“There were no forest fires, peatland fires, and wildfires. That is the product of everyone’s hard work,” he said yesterday.
He maintained that this statistical success is the work of every stakeholder other than the attempts to reduce plastic waste for the country’s preservation.
Tempo.co’s fact-check program entitled 'Live Fact-checking' cekfakta.com found that Jokowi’s statement is slightly misguided as existing government records suggest forest fires took place in 2016.
However, it needs to be noted that 2016 (438,363) saw a significant drop in forest fire cases compared to 2015 (2,611,411).
The dropping cases of wildfires continued in 2017 that saw fires affecting 165,484-hectares of land area and 90 hectares in 2018 just four days prior to the Asian Games, with most of it being in Riau.
Greenpeace Indonesia previously responded to Jokowi`s statistical error by stating that forest fires continue to happen from 2015 to the present time. This tweet on Sunday – the night of the presidential debate – was retweeted by thousands of Twitter users and generated thousands of comments.
TEMPO.CO