PLN vs The Public: When Defensive Communication Deepens a Crisis

Public frustration is growing across Indonesia following reports of electricity bills doubling for May 2026 usage.

Consumers who normally paid around Rp300,000 suddenly found themselves charged Rp600,000 or more. The reaction was immediate: confusion, anger, and distrust.

At the same time, PLN stated that electricity tariffs for the April–June 2026 period remained unchanged from the previous quarter.

Technically, both statements can be true at the same time. Tariffs may indeed remain unchanged while total bills increase significantly due to consumption patterns, post-discount normalization, billing cycles, or accumulated usage adjustments. But this is exactly where the communication problem begins.

The public is not asking whether the per-kWh tariff increased. They are asking why their electricity bill suddenly doubled. This distinction matters, and this is not an isolated incident.

A similar controversy emerged in April 2025 when electricity bills surged after the end of the government’s 50% electricity discount program from January to February 2025. Once again, PLN emphasized that there was “no tariff increase” for the second quarter.

Then in July 2025, a customer named Ratna from East Java shared her electricity bill history online. Her June bill was Rp65,437, but in July it suddenly jumped to Rp722,779. PLN responded by saying tariffs had not increased and suggested higher electricity consumption as the likely cause.

The pattern has become consistent. And so has the communication response: highly technical, highly defensive, and often perceived as answering a different question than the one the public is actually asking.

From a communication science perspective, this is a classic pragmatic mismatch. Institutions often respond to the most technically defensible question instead of the emotionally relevant one.

The public experience says their bill doubled. The institutional response says the tariff did not increase. Both statements may be factually correct, yet emotionally incompatible. This is where trust erosion begins.

According to Leon Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Theory, when people experience something that directly contradicts statements from authority figures, they typically either accept the explanation, search for additional information to reconcile the contradiction, or reject the authority’s explanation entirely.

Without proactive, transparent, and empathetic communication, the public often chooses the third option. And that is the real crisis facing PLN today.

Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) by W. Timothy Coombs explains why this happens. Once stakeholders feel direct negative impact, denial-oriented or overly defensive responses tend to intensify reputational damage rather than reduce it.

What organizations need in moments like this is not institutional defensiveness, but a rebuild strategy. That means acknowledging public concerns, explaining the context clearly, demonstrating empathy, and providing actionable solutions that people can immediately understand.

Electricity is not a luxury product. It is a basic public necessity. And because PLN operates as Indonesia’s sole electricity provider, the standard for public communication should be higher, not lower.

Public trust is not automatically guaranteed by institutional status or state ownership. Trust is built through communication. And it can also be lost through communication.