This is a screengrab of Indonesian President Joko Widodo address at Imlek Nasional, the national celebration of Lunar New Year, at Bogor Palace in Jakarta on Feb 20, 2021. 

Indonesian President Joko Widodo was wearing reddish traditional Chinese attire when attending a special get-together marking the national celebration of Lunar New Year on Feb 20. Soon he found passion around and online.

Lunar New Year 2021 “is the Year of the Metal Ox,” Gandi Sulistiyanto, chairman of the event’s organizing committee, told a largely virtual audience at Imlek Nasional in Indonesian language. 

Jokowi stressed the urgency of upholding the country’s long-held tradition of “gotong royong”, or the spirit of helping each other 

“This is the year of Mr President Jokowi as he belongs to the zodiac of the Ox,” Sulistiyanto said. Both the president and Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung were at present at the ceremony held at Bogor Palace, south of Jakarta.  

Jokowi is what President Widodo is popularly known in the country of archipelagoes with the world’s largest Muslim population along with a number of ethnic minorities, including ethnic Chinese-Indonesians. Born in central Java in 1961 and dubbed “man of the people”, he was first elected to presidency in 2014 and was re-elected in 2019 for the second five-year term.

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Sulistiyanto wished the president stay “strong, had-working, perseverant, honest, extra-patient and persistent” – the traits displayed by the Ox in his words, which was passionately echoed by the online audiences. 

In his address broadcasted live by Kompas TV and the Presidential Secretariat’s official YouTube the president said: “We must come up with the strength, boldness, perseverance and the disciplines of an ox so as to address all the challenges before us, namely the crises at this time.” 

His speech received more than 58,000 views at the Presidential Secretariat’s account on YouTube alone.

Sulistiyanto was in high spirit. “We feel convinced that he and his ranks and file will develop Indonesia and will do his best to get the nation united, rise up and move forward,” he told the audience.

Lunar New Year 2021 "is the Year of the Metal Ox” as well as “the year of Mr President Jokowi", said Gandi Sulistiyanto, organizing committee chairman of Indonesia's Imlek Nasional, at Bogor Palace as well online on Feb 20, 2021.

West Jakarta citizen Arifin Santosa, who took part in the Imlek ceremony, told the correspondent that he shed tears when seeing a young woman loudly and impressively uttering this line from her poem in the gathering:  “Return Imlek to its people !”

The lady is daughter of former “religious, pluralist and humanist” president Abdurrahman Wahid, who in 2000 issued a decree that ethnic Chinese-Indonesians were no longer banned from practicing their culture. Many other virtual media viewers shared his feeling with online responses and comments.   

Indeed, in the most populous country in Southeast Asia, long standing anti-Chinese prejudices are declining, although many still hold that the issue needs to be handled with care.

In his speech at the Imlek Nasional the president stressed the urgency of upholding the country’s long-held tradition of “gotong royong”, or mutual help spirit.  He specially called for cooperation to make the ongoing national vaccination drive a success while saying that securing adequate vaccine supply was still posing a great challenge to Indonesia. 

The country’s ethnic Chinese are known to act immediately and in a relatively well-organized way, in cooperation with other communities and parties. They also tried providing help for desperately needy people due to physical restrictions with daily necessities and medicines apart. Many of them have contributed masks, protective gear for medical workers, and provided WiFi access to staying-home students and pupils. 

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And ethnic Chinese-owned companies in the country have helped their workers to get assistance during the pandemic and access to vaccines during the national vaccination drive.

Among those attending the occasion virtually was Vice-President Ma’ruf Amin, wearing a Chinese-colored batik shirt. The grand-daughter of former president Abdurrahman Wahid touched the audience with a national song that tells “the motherland is sad and shedding tears”. 

Pancoro Basuki, a senior executive at a Jakarta-based manufacturing firm, told the correspondent that China’s investment in Indonesia is continuing to rise. Meanwhile, prejudice against ethnic Chinese domestically is still casting shadows. A Muslim, Basuki is known to get along well with fellow business people and others from different backgrounds. 

Earlier this month, the striking decorations for Chinese New Year in the lobby of the building housing Indonesia's Ministry of Religious Affairs have become a social media hit across the vast nation.

The captivating display is a first from the ministry and conveys a strong message from the Minister of Religious Affairs, Yaqut Cholil Qoumas, that Indonesia belongs to all citizens, regardless of people's backgrounds.

READ MORE: Foreign leaders send Lunar New Year greetings

Rescue operations rolled out after the Imlek gathering involved support in different forms from ethnic Chinese communities and other social sectors. Ethnic Chinese are widely recognized for their quick initiatives to help in times of disasters.      

The author is a freelance journalist for China Daily.