Reuters: Indonesian President Joko Widodo has created a buzz on social media after a video sequence shown at the opening ceremony of the 18th Asian Games culminated with the 57-year-old leader roaring into Jakarta’s main stadium on a powerful motorbike.
After his motorcade is held up by Jakarta’s notorious traffic, the tongue-in-cheek video showed a formally dressed Widodo hopping onto a motorbike and apparently leaping obstacles and navigating alleyways before riding into the stadium.
A seemingly unruffled Widodo then took his seat before opening the Games on Saturday evening at a spectacular ceremony involving around 4,000 dancers and a 600-tonne tropical landscape stage set complete with volcano.
By Sunday, the video of the president’s dash across the city had more than 800,000 views on a YouTube posting by official broadcaster SCTV.
It has also been a hit on Twitter, with the hashtags #proudtobeindonesian and #stuntman trending in the Southeast Asian country, where many of the 260 million people are avid social media users.
One Twitter user with the handle @dethabun even likened the performance of the president, who is often known by his nickname Jokowi, to actor Tom Cruise in the action movie “Mission: Impossible”.
Our time is a news portal