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Enraged by protesters likening him to a "big and stupid" water buffalo, Indonesia’s president has ordered the beasts and other animals banned at street rallies, a decision some Indonesians said shows their leader can’t handle criticism.<\/p>\n
The ban, issued Wednesday by police in Jakarta, the capital, follows a demonstration last week in which protesters — who accused President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono<\/a> of failing to fight rampant corruption — tried to parade a water buffalo with Yudhoyono’s name spray-painted on it through the city’s main traffic circle. The ban applies to all animals at rallies.<\/p>\n Police removed the buffalo from the rally, one of a slew of protests held across the nation to mark the first 100 days of the president’s second term.<\/p>\n Yudhoyono was not exactly thrilled with the comparison to a beast of burden that is a symbol of peasant rice farmers in Indonesia.<\/p>\n "They said that I am like a buffalo: big and stupid and slow in moving," he told reporters Tuesday in the West Java town of Cipanas. "That statement is not ethical or moral, and to use a buffalo can violate other regulations, like traffic laws."\n<\/p>\n Yudhoyono has been the longest-ruling democratic leader since the end of Indonesia’s dictatorship in 1998.<\/p>\n Desmond Mahesa, a lawmaker from the opposition party Gerindra, called the buffalo ban an overreaction and said it shows the president is a weak leader.<\/p>\n "I think he is not a dictator, as long demonstrations are allowed in this country, but he too often complains about people’s protests and critics against his administration," Mahesa said.<\/p>\n Political analyst Hilmar Farid of the National University of Singapore said he doubts Yudhoyono’s new restriction will have lasting implications for Indonesia’s democracy.<\/p>\n "He also said that he would never allow people to burn effigies or pictures of him, but people still do it," Farid said.<\/p>\n Police contend there’s a practical reason for the banning of the buffalo: safety.<\/p>\n "There is no guarantee that protesters can keep the water buffalo from being provoked and threatening people’s lives if it is angered," Jakarta police spokesman Col. Boy Rafli Amar said.<\/p>\n — Associated Press<\/p>\n Animal news on the go: Follow Unleashed on Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Photo: An Indonesian protester leads a water buffalo during an anti-government protest in Jakarta on Jan. 28. Credit: Irwin Fedriansyah \/ Associated Press<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Enraged by protesters likening him to a "big and stupid" water buffalo, Indonesia’s president has ordered the beasts and other animals banned at street rallies, a decision some Indonesians said shows their leader can’t handle criticism. The ban, issued Wednesday by police in Jakarta, the capital, follows a demonstration last week in which protesters — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-277966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}