Markus Junianto Sihaloho, Muninggar Sri Saraswati, April Aswadi & Farouk Arnaz – In what is becoming a nagging political problem, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's speech just hours after last Friday's bombings of the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels has provoked a fresh wave of criticism over the use of intelligence photographs of alleged recent terrorist activities.
On Wednesday, the president denied accusations that the photographs dated back to at least 2004 and said the content of his speech had been "distorted" by unnamed individuals.
Yudhoyono has been under criticism for alluding in his speech to the possibility the bombings might have been linked to recent poll results.
Now, a number of politicians and observers say that the photographs brandished by the president to back up his statement that terrorists were planning to foment violence were actually old shots that had already been shown to the House of Representatives by the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) in 2004.
Yudhoyono said on Wednesday that the pictures were taken in May 2009. "What I got was an intelligence report, not rumor, not gossip," he said at a Democratic Party conference.
The president also insisted that in his speech he had not linked the hotel bombings to the elections. "My statement on Friday was clear," he said.
Among those challenging the photos were Andreas H. Pareira, an Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) lawmaker, Permadi, a former lawmaker of the same party, and noted terrorism expert Sidney Jones.
The photographs showed two masked men shooting at a target that bore a portrait of Yudhoyono. One picture showed the face with a bullet hole in its cheek. "The pictures are old ones. Pak SBY's reaction tended to be provocative, linking terrorism with the poll results," Pareira said. "I think he wanted to get public sympathy."
The campaign teams of Yudhoyono's rivals in the presidential election – PDI-P's Megawati Sukarnoputri and Golkar's Vice President Jusuf Kalla – have criticized the speech for appearing to link the bombings and the poll results.
Effendy Ghazali, a University of Indonesia communications professor, said Yudhoyono made a "significant mistake" by linking the bombings with the polls and displaying the photographs.
"Such a statement and those pictures should not have been released in the aftermath of the bombings," Effendy said. "Maybe he was very sad and disappointed after the attacks. But it appeared that he was in a panic."
Democratic Party executive Ruhut Sitompul said the pictures were confiscated in May from a suspected terrorist group in East Kalimantan.
Sidney Jones, a well-known terrorism expert with the International Crisis Group, told a discussion panel aired by Metro TV that the pictures were taken in 2004 by a terrorist group in West Seram, Maluku.
National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Sulistyo Ishak declined to comment on the issue, only saying that the police did not give the photographs to the president.