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Muhammad Rizal Fadillah died on Friday afternoon, November 13. He was a preacher, a former regional legislator and one of the earliest people to publicly claim that former president Joko Widodo’s university diploma was fake.
Roy Suryo, the former youth and sports minister who has led the campaign, announced the death in a video on his YouTube channel. He said Rizal was taken to a Muhammadiyah hospital after Friday prayers, admitted to intensive care, and died before evening. Roy called him “a fighter among us” and vowed to carry on.
Where the case stands
Rizal was not just an online commentator. He was one of eight people named as suspects by the Greater Jakarta Metropolitan Police (Polda Metro Jaya) in a defamation and slander case brought over the diploma allegations. Police divided the suspects into two groups.
The first group included Eggi Sudjana, Kurnia Tri Royani, Damai Hari Lubis, Rustam Effendi and Rizal Fadillah. The second group comprised Roy Suryo, the physician Tifauzia Tyassuma (known as Dr Tifa) and Rismon Hasiholan Sianipar.
Several suspects have since left the case through restorative justice, a mechanism in which the accused and the complainant reach a settlement and investigators drop the matter. Police issued termination orders (SP3) for Eggi, Damai and Rismon. Roy Suryo and Dr Tifa are now on trial at the East Jakarta District Court, where Jokowi has appeared as a witness. Under Indonesian criminal procedure, the case against Rizal ends with his death.
Meanwhile the National Police have repeated that Jokowi’s diploma was examined by their forensic laboratory, Puslabfor, and that there is “no urgency” to test it again.
My view: this was never going to be settled in a criminal court
I am uneasy with how this saga has been handled on both sides.
The diploma claims have been examined by Gadjah Mada University, which issued the degree, and by police forensic experts, and have not stood up. Repeating them for years without new evidence is not investigative journalism. It is a grievance campaign. People who make serious accusations against a public figure must be prepared to back them up.
But using criminal defamation law against citizens who question a head of state’s documents, even badly founded questions, sets a dangerous precedent. A democracy deals with a claim like this through open evidence: publish the records, let independent experts examine them, and let the public judge. It should not deal with it by putting a 60-something preacher under criminal investigation. That he died a criminal suspect will now be turned into martyrdom by his supporters. Dr Tifa has already called him a syahid (martyr). This shows how criminal prosecution can strengthen a conspiracy theory rather than end it.
The irony this week is hard to miss. Just one day before Rizal died, Jokowi’s son Gibran left the vice presidency after the Supreme Court and the education ministry invalidated his school-equivalency certificate. Supporters of Roy Suryo will claim vindication, though the two cases concern different documents, different institutions and different facts. That distinction matters, and serious journalists should keep it clear.
What Indonesia lacks is a trusted, routine and public way to verify officials’ credentials before they take office. Without it, disputes over documents become political battles and then criminal cases, and no one comes out ahead.
Sources: CNN Indonesia; Kompas; TribunWow.
