Jakarta – Presidential candidate Anies Baswedan claims that he was unable to fulfill his promise of divesting the Jakarta provincial administration's stake in beer producer PT Delta Djakarta due to the motion being blocked by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).
One of the promises Anies made when campaigning to be the governor of Jakarta was to sell Jakarta's stake in the beer company. However, he claims that after he won the election and took office, the motion for divestment was blocked by the PDI-P, which held the most seats on the Jakarta Legislative Council (DPRD Jakarta).
"We didn't have enough power at the DPRD [Jakarta], so [the motion] kept getting blocked by the PDI-P. Who was the speaker? PDI-P. That's why [the stake] couldn't be sold," Anies said when campaigning in Ciamis, West Java, on Thursday, as quoted by Kompas TV.
Anies said that he had planned to use the funds from the divestment to improve public services such as providing clean water, schools and hospitals. He believed that the government had no need to affiliate with a beer company and should instead focus on companies that contributed to development and infrastructure.
Reflecting on this, Anies reminded his supporters to also vote to secure seats for political parties in his electoral alliance in the upcoming legislative election.
"To be able to make changes, we must succeed; not only by winning the presidential election but also by strengthening our foothold in the legislature. Otherwise, our motions for change will be blocked," he said.
The former Jakarta governor previously conveyed the same narrative when debuting on the campaign trail at Ciracas Sports Hall in Jakarta on Nov. 28, 2023. At the time, he said that having a legislative body predominantly composed of supportive political parties would have better facilitated his agenda for change.
According to Delta Djakarta's website, the Jakarta provincial administration is one of the major shareholders of the company with a 26.25 percent stake as of 2022. Back in October of 2022, Jakarta's acting governor Heru Budi Hartono disclosed that the local government had no plans to divest its stake in Delta Djakarta.
Heru is known as a close aide of President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo. Before taking the acting Jakarta governor post, he was the Presidential Secretariat head.