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JAKARTA. As of Sunday evening, Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama was still waiting for the city council’s approval of the draft 2015 city budget despite bitter rejection from most factions earlier on the weekend.
Ahok said after an internal meeting with his subordinates at City Hall on Sunday that he had not signed a gubernatorial regulation (Pergub) which would become the legal basis for using the 2014 budget ceiling.
“We have prepared the [documents for the] gubernatorial regulation, but I have not signed it,” he said.
Ahok said he still hoped that City Council Speaker Prasetyo Edi Marsudi would change his mind and finally approve the draft bylaw before the administration submitted the final draft budget to the Home Ministry on Monday.
“We have also prepared the draft bylaw,” Ahok said, adding that he had been trying to communicate with the council speaker since Friday but to no avail.
Prasetyo, of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) faction, previously gave a strong signal that he would approve the draft budget, which used an electronic budgeting system, on Thursday.
He said he gave his full support for the draft budget and expressed appreciation for Ahok’s drive to provide transparency.
“Now the budgeting process is very open, very transparent. Our communication has also improved. The most important thing right now is that the residents will benefit from the city budget,” Prasetyo said last Thursday.
However, despite signs of reconciliation, both parties reached a dead end on the last day of meetings to discuss the draft budget on Friday, forcing the city administration to use the budget ceiling from the revised 2014 budget, which was set at Rp 72.9 trillion (US$5.59 billion), slightly lower than the draft 2015 city budget which was set at Rp 73.08 trillion.
Later that day, councilors held an internal meeting where they decided to reject the draft 2015 city budget, which had previously been improved by the city administration according to recommendations from the Home Ministry.
Prasetyo did not show up to either of the meetings.
Ahok said using the revised 2014 budget ceiling would not cause any trouble for his administration as there was only a small gap between the figure and the draft 2015 city budget.
“The difference is Rp 180 billion. We can easily scrap a number of land acquisition programs to balance the budget,” he said.
Ahok also underlined that the public service would not be affected as no important programs would be disrupted.
“The only disadvantage of using the revised 2014 budget ceiling is that if the tax agency collects more money, surpassing its target, we cannot use it,” he said.
Ahok said he was ready to use the revised 2014 budget ceiling again next year if such a dispute occurred again. Ahok said one of the root causes of the budget saga was councilors’ disapproval of the use of the e-budgeting system in the draft budget.
“I hope they [the councilors] will eventually use their consciences and agree to use the e-budgeting system,” he said.
Ahok claimed that he had full support from President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to use the system.
“Pak Jokowi was also mad. We feel we have been cheated so far,” he said.
Meanwhile, the councilors ended the budget dispute in bitterness.
Deputy Speaker Mohammad Taufik of the Gerindra Party blamed Ahok for saying that he would run the city without help from councilors if he had to.
“So we’re taking up his challenge. All factions except the NasDem Party have agreed to disapprove of the budget. We’ll disapprove of all budget drafts until 2017 if we have to,” Taufik told The Jakarta Post via phone on the weekend. Ahok’s tenure as Jakarta governor will end in 2017.
Taufik also blamed the city administration for the tardiness. “They gave us the draft at 8 p.m. on Friday. Meanwhile the deadline was midnight on the same day. We can’t possibly discuss over 6,600 pages in just a couple of hours,” Taufik said.
City Secretary Saefullah said the city administration was late to submit the draft on Friday because it was still struggling to provide hard copies for the nine factions. Earlier, on Tuesday, the city council postponed the first discussion because the administration did not provide councilors with the hard copies.
The Home Ministry has stated it would need to get a statement letter from the city council regarding the disapproval of the draft budget.(Corry Elyda and Dewanti A. Wardhani)
