President Jokowi’s Motorbike Stunt is a Hit Among Indonesian Netizens

By Karissa Lund  •  in News
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We thought no one could top “James Bond” and The Queen’s grand entrance at the 2012 London Olympics, but President Jokowi is here to prove us wrong. As if skydiving into a stadium like what The Queen did wasn’t over-the-top enough, the 57-year old Indonesian President roared into Jakarta’s main stadium on a superbike.

The action movie-like video sequence shown at the opening ceremony of the 18th Asian Games left every Indonesian feeling proud of their leader’s badassery. We can’t blame them, take a look for yourselves:

 

Jokowi has always had some street cred. Coming from humble beginnings in a fishing village ascending to President of South East Asia’s most populated nation, he’s also a proud metalhead–who received a Lars Ulrich-signed boxset from Danish PM Lars Løkke Rasmussen–so it wasn’t a surprise to see him take on this role. Yesterday, the YouTube video by official broadcaster, SCTV, of the President’s dash across the city had more than 800,000 views.

He definitely impressed as the hashtags #proudtobeindonesian and #stuntman started popping out on Twitter shortly after the video went viral. It was trending in the country, where many of the 260 million citizens are avid social media users.

Check out some of the tweets that shared the excitement:

 

 

 

Indonesian media have speculated over which parts of the video were actually carried out by a stunt actor rather than Widodo himself, who is a self-confessed motorcycle fan. But whatever it is, it’s definitely something you don’t see everyday. So, who cares? Let’s get Tun M to jet-ski over Equanimity already!

On a more sombre note, some are wondering if PM Jokowi had reacted fast enough to help the denizens of Lombok who were devastated by 3 consecutive earthquakes in the past few weeks, something that actually deserves more attention than a stupid bike trick… but that’s just our internal voice talking.

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