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Opinion | Can Indonesians trust Jokowi’s government in the coronavirus crisis?
- The Indonesian government has been less than transparent, with the health minister attributing the lack of infections until this week to prayer
- With two confirmed and 80 suspected Covid-19 cases, Indonesia must ensure its agencies are on the same page and improve transparency and public trust
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
The confirmation on Monday that Indonesia had two cases of the coronavirus ended weeks of insistence by officials that the country had no infections within its borders.
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The patients are a 31-year-old woman and her 64-year-old mother who live in Depok in West Java, just outside the capital Jakarta. The younger woman had come into contact with an infected Japanese traveller from Malaysia last month, and is believed to have infected her mother. There are now six other patients suspected of having the virus and the Sulianti Saroso Hospital is awaiting their test results.
The Indonesian government has been less than transparent in its handling of the coronavirus.
Depok mayor Mohamad Idris admitted this week to the VIVAnews outlet that the two women had tested positive a day before President Joko Widodo’s announcement, but he had been asked by the central government to keep it quiet.
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If the motivation for delaying such announcements was to prevent causing mass panic, then it lacks logic, because Indonesians have for weeks concluded that the country was bound to have Covid-19 cases, given that its neighbours, including Singapore and Malaysia, have confirmed many of their own cases.
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