Jakarta. One of the highlights of the recent vice presidential debate was when candidate Gibran Rakabuming asked rival Muhaimin Iskandar about his team’s stance on nickel.

“Candidate pairing number 1 [Anies Baswedan-Muhaimin Iskandar] and their campaign team often talked about lithium ferro-phosphate [LFP]. Is your team anti-nickel or what? Please explain,” Gibran asked Muhaimin.

LFP does not contain nickel of which Indonesia is abundant. The Anies-Muhaimin campaign team, particularly senior member Thomas Lembong, not long ago brought up LFP batteries’ growing popularity over nickel in the electric vehicle (EV) industry. However, Gibran felt that Muhaimin’s response to his question during the debate showed that the latter did not really understand what LFP was.

“How strange. It is your campaign team that keeps on talking about LFP, and here we see the vice presidential candidate not understanding what LFP really is,” Gibran told Muhaimin.

Gibran said judging by Muhaimin’s response, he doubted whether Thomas --also known as Tom-- often had discussions with his vice presidential candidate. “I wonder if Gus Muhaimin [you] are anti-nickel just like Mr. Tom Lembong,” Gibran, who is the running mate to Prabowo Subianto, said.

According to Gibran, Indonesia holds the world’s largest nickel reserves. The abundance of the silvery-white metal becomes Indonesia’s strength and bargaining power. He added: “But you talked about LFP instead. That is the same as promoting Chinese products.”