Having been kicked out of office amid accusations of human rights abuses, Indonesia's former security chief General Wiranto is set to take to the road to promote his new career as a singer of love songs, a news report said yesterday.
Kicking off this weekend, Wiranto will visit 10 Indonesian cities to promote his new album For You My Indonesia, the newspaper Bisnis Indonesia said.
The album, which was launched last month at a swank party in a top Jakarta hotel, has already been a hit, having sold 100,000 CDs and 200,000 tapes.
PHOTO: AP
Money raised from the sale of the albums will go to charities that are helping an estimated 900,000 people displaced by riots and unrest across the sprawling Southeast Asian nation, the report said.
Ironically, troops that had been under Wiranto's command are being blamed for most of the troubles.
Wiranto, who has long listed karaoke singing as a hobby, was Indonesia's armed forces commander when pro-Jakarta militias rampaged across East Timor, in the days after it voted to break free of Indonesian rule a year ago.
He became senior security minister in Indonesia's first freely elected government in almost half a century, but was forced to quit his Cabinet post in February over allegations that he was partly responsible for the bloodshed and destruction.
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