Walhi Says Prabowo-Gibran's Victory 'Rings a Dangerous Alarm'

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Running pair Prabowo Subianto - Gibran Rakabuming Raka is currently leading in the quick count for the 2024 Election. The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) considers this situation to be alarming.

"This rings a dangerous alarm since we know exactly that 02 (Prabowo-Gobran) used sustainability as a tagline," said Walhi Indonesia Forest and Garden Campaigner, Uli Arta Siagian, to Tempo on Thursday.

Prabowo-Gibran's vision and mission, Uli said, clearly shows their plans to continue President Joko Widodo or Jokowi's programs. "Especially programs that are considered strategic and superior, such as food estates," she said.

Uli said that if Prabowo-Gibran continued with the food estate program without fundamental corrections, the potential for forest destruction and land grabs would become even greater. Moreover, the government is already planning a new food estate in Papua, South Sumatra, and NTT.

"This is also detrimental to the state because of the trillions in the state budget spent to build a failing food estate, where the accountability was never explained," said Uli.

The food estate project is a program that has been widely discussed as part of Prabowo Subianto's work plan if elected in the 2024 presidential election. Prabowo reasoned that food estates are necessary for food resilience.

"If there are national figures who question food estate, there are only two possibilities, they don’t understand or they don’t want to understand. Both are no good," said Prabowo in late January.

So far, Prabowo-Gibran still leads in the quick count results with more than 50 percent of votes.

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