Jakarta – House Speaker Setya Novanto has once again found himself mired in controversy, this time over his use of his personal luxury sedan for official purposes.
Reporters at the House of Representatives first noticed the Jaguar XJR parked at the House speaker's designated spot outside the legislative assembly building in Jakarta on Monday.
The car bore the license plate "Indonesia 6," which is assigned to the car provided to the speaker of the House. However, that particular vehicle is meant to be a Lexus, not a Jaguar.
Asked by reporters to explain the discrepancy, Setya claimed the Lexus was in the garage for repairs following a fender-bender, and that the Jaguar was his own car.
He also claimed he was entitled to removing the "Indonesia 6" plate from the government-issued Lexus and using it on the privately registered Jaguar – a claim that at least one other legislator has found fault with.
"The police could stop him if they spotted him on the road," Junimart Girsang, a deputy chairman of the House Ethics Council, said on Monday as quoted by Merdeka.com. "There's no reason [for switching plates]. The 'Indonesia 6' plate should stay on the designated vehicle."
Switching plates is indeed an offense under the traffic law, but Setya claimed he was within his rights to do so because he was using the Jaguar while in his official capacity as the House speaker.
He also claimed he bought the car five years earlier. The XJR variant of Jaguar's XJ line of sedans, however, first appeared in 2013. Many owners of luxury cars in Indonesia are known to give a false, older date for their vehicle model in order to evade paying the high taxes imposed on imported autos. It is not clear if this is the case with Setya's Jaguar, which, judging by the stated model, is no older than two years.
Setya has run afoul of the House Ethics Council once already this year, over his appearance at a campaign rally for US presidential hopeful Donald Trump in New York in September. The council duly admonished him for what it deemed an impropriety.