JAKARTA (AFP) – Indonesia’s notorious traffic congestion was on display for the world Thursday (Oct 5) after the country’s president was forced to walk 2km through the scorching heat to attend a military parade.<\/p>\n
The country’s traffic nightmares were aptly illustrated when President Joko Widodo had to walk more than 2km to attend a ceremony marking the 72nd anniversary of the Indonesian military’s founding.<\/p>\n
He and senior government officials were held up by gridlock as they approached the military parade in Cilegon, a port city about two-and-a-half hours drive from the capital Jakarta, the presidential palace said.<\/p>\n
After a 30-minute wait, “the president then decided from inside the car that he would walk,” his guard Ili Dasili said in a statement.<\/p>\n
National police chief Tito Karnavian, who was also stuck in the jam, joined the president.<\/p>\n
Video footage shows the president walking with a phalanx of security personnel while spectators yell and chant his name.<\/p>\n
The president’s unorthodox entrance wasn’t lost on social media users, who questioned why the leader of South-east Asia’s largest economy was compelled to walk to the event.<\/p>\n
“How come the president walked for 2km to the military anniversary location, why didn’t they give him the privilege of vacating the road or taking him in a helicopter?” Twitter user @Pujithegooners wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JAKARTA (AFP) – Indonesia’s notorious traffic congestion was on display for the world Thursday (Oct 5) after the country’s president was forced to walk 2km through the scorching heat to attend a military parade. The country’s traffic nightmares were aptly illustrated when President Joko Widodo had to walk more than 2km to attend a ceremony marking the 72nd anniversary of… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":809,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions\/809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}