Budget Watchdog Backs Up Ahok’s Claims of Budget Manipulation

Fitra says the City Council’s version of the budget is mostly about spending — and little of it authorized by City Hall

Jakarta Globe, Lenny Tristia Tambun & Yustinus Paat, Mar 06, 2015

Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, left, is sticking to his guns in his battle

 against the City Council’s attempt to sneak unauthorized spending programs

into the city budget. (Antara Photo/Muhammad Adimaja)

Jakarta. The education sector has the most unsanctioned programs in the 2015 Jakarta budget, accounting for nearly half of the programs inserted or inflated by the City Council, an antigraft watchdog says.

The Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency (Fitra) says the budget for the capital’s education office has gone up by Rp 5.3 trillion ($411 million) after it passed the council’s deliberation process.

The city administration had previously proposed an annual budget of Rp 78 trillion, but the council’s approved version came out at Rp 90 trillion, signalling that the councilors added more programs and inflated others.

Fitra’s advocacy manager, Apung Widadi, says his group has studied both versions and concluded that the council’s version is filled with markups and programs not sanctioned or even needed by the city.

“The council’s [version] is more procurement [than programs],” Apung said. “It doesn’t reflect what the people actually need, like programs to alleviate poverty or prevent kids dropping out of school. Instead, what the council is proposing is the procurement of such and such.”

Apung cited the procurement of uninterruptible power supply equipment as one such unnecessary expenditure, an example often cited by Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama to describe what he sees as the kind of massive budget manipulation that occurs during legislative deliberations every year.

Last year, the city was forced to spend nearly Rp 330 billion to provide UPS machines for 55 schools across the city.

The schools say they neither need nor asked for the devices, whose price tag of Rp 6 billion each is highly inflated from retail listings of no more than Rp 20 million.

“Who proposed [these UPS machines]?” Apung asked. “If the schools really need [a Rp 6 billion machine] they might as well rebuild their schools from scratch or [the government] can build more schools and create better access to education.”

This year, the council inserted similar UPS procurement funding for dozens of urban ward and subdistrict offices in West Jakarta, but listed the price at less than Rp 4 billion.

Another dubious project involving the city’s education sector is the Rp 10.2 billion construction of a wing at State Junior High School (SMPN) No. 97 in Utan Kayu, East Jakarta. The government in 2013 already spent Rp 8.1 billion for the same wing and ended up with just the foundation and structural skeleton to show for all that money.

The Rp 10.2 billion proposed this year is meant to finish the whole structure.

The project was included in the city administration’s original proposal, and Basuki acknowledged that some of his own staff at City Hall might have also been involved in manipulating the budget.

However, he insisted that the program was scratched off before City Hall submitted the budget to the City Council — where it somehow found its way back in.

“Yes, some [city officials] are still behaving badly and pushing their luck,” the governor said. “We will comb the budget more thoroughly, both versions [from City Hall and from the City Council].”

City public housing office chief Ika Puji Lestari claimed that she has taken the construction project out of her office’s budget. “I’ll check with my staff. If [the project] is still there, we’ll drop it,” she said.

Basuki has drawn the ire of councilors for refusing to submit their Rp 90 trillion version of the budget to the Home Affairs Ministry, submitting instead what the cheaper version proposed by his administration.

Incensed, the City Council voted overwhelmingly last week to launch an inquiry into his administrative “deviation” — a process that could potentially lead to Basuki’s impeachment.

The Home Affairs Ministry has tried to mediate the spat but Basuki has refused to be cowed. A mediation talk between City Hall officials and councilors on Thursday descended into a heated war of words.

Lucius Karus of the Concerned Citizens for the Indonesian Legislature (Formappi) said the Home Affairs Ministry should have been more supportive of Basuki’s efforts to expose the budget manipulation instead of simply getting the budget finalized and quelling the tensions.

“The mediation effort focuses too much on instant solutions,” he said.