Rocky Gerung at Nadiem Makarim's Trial: I Thought the Prosecutor Was Clever, but He Was Exhausted in Connecting Facts

Jakarta – Academic Rocky Gerung attended the trial of former Minister of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology Nadiem Makarim at the Corruption Court in Jakarta on Monday, 11 May 2026.

On that occasion, Rocky emphasised that he does not support Nadiem Makarim. This is because Rocky only wanted to observe the trial process from the perspective of legal reasoning.

“Well, I want to know whether this trial is guided by clean legal reasoning or if there are defects in it, political rust, ordered rust, and all sorts of things. That’s the only thing I actually want to test,” Rocky said at the Corruption District Court.

On the other hand, Rocky assessed that the prosecutor had failed to connect facts to become evidence in the trial he witnessed.

One thing that caught Rocky’s attention was regarding the reason Nadiem brought outsiders into the Ministry to form a special team.

“I thought the prosecutor was clever, but he was exhausted in connecting facts to become evidence, evidence to become charges. That’s where he failed, I think,” he added.

According to Rocky, Nadiem’s action of bringing outsiders into the Ministry is not a criminal act. Because, this is one of the functions of the ministry to collaborate with competent individuals.

“Isn’t that the function of the ministry? Actually, if a minister sees that his ministry is incompetent, he brings in smart people, right? It’s that simple. And that’s not criminal. So the prosecutor, as I said earlier, is exhausted in turning WhatsApp chats into what’s wrong,” he concluded.

For information, Nadiem Makarim along with other defendants has been charged with causing a state loss of Rp2.1 trillion in the alleged corruption case related to the procurement of Chromebooks at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology for the period 2019-2022.

In total, there are 25 parties consisting of individuals and companies that enriched themselves in this case, one of which is Nadiem Makarim for Rp809 billion.

However, this has been denied by Nadiem Makarim. Because, the hundreds of billions of rupiah is a figure from the results of corporate actions between Google and Gojek that are not related to the Chromebook procurement.