WEST JAVA - Newly inaugurated Bekasi Mayor Tri Adhianto confirmed on March 5 that he had left his residence for a four-star hotel in the city amid severe flooding that forced thousands of other residents to take shelter at makeshift evacuation centers.
Mr Tri said he had decamped to the hotel in downtown Bekasi to make it easier for him to directly monitor the emergency situation, Kompas reported.
“Yes, I stayed in the hotel because of its strategic location,” Mr Tri said, adding that he had only stayed there for a couple of hours.
The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) politician claimed that he had left the hotel very early on the morning of March 5 to help prepare meals for evacuees.
“Also, my wife left the hotel at 6am,” he said.
A video of the mayor’s wife, Ms Wiewiek Hargono, checking into the plush hotel in downtown Bekasi while floodwaters started to inundate parts of the city went viral early on March 5.
Netizens blasted the mayor and members of his family for being insensitive to the plight of the city’s residents.
“When a ship is sinking, it is the rats who are the first to abandon it. A real captain will first give priority to passengers, and if need be, he will [go down] with the ship,” popular account @PartaiSocmed posted in a tweet on social media site X.
To drive the point home, some X users reposted a photo of former public works minister Basuki Hadimuljono sitting on top of a flooded embankment near his home in Bekasi on March 4.
Another posted a clip of Basuki riding a motorbike through flooded streets to inspect affected neighborhoods in Kemang Pratama, Bekasi, on March 4. THE JAKARTA POST/ASIA NEWS NETWORK
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