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overnor Fauzi Bowo has dismissed scathing allegations by several graft watchdogs that he had misused the capital’s budget to finance his reelection bid.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, the governor, who is seeking a second term with running mate Nachrowi Ramli, said the regional budget had been approved by the city council and the Home Ministry.

He slammed his accusers, saying that they did not understand the regulation. “Do not react to the words of fools,” he said.

The Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH) and the Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) earlier on Tuesday alleged that Fauzi might have misused regional funds allocated for social aid and routine gubernatorial activities for campaigning.

They pointed to the fact that under the 2012 budget, the Jakarta administration allocated grants worth Rp 1.36 trillion (US$151.1 million), three times higher than 2010’s

Rp 479.34 billion. A similar suspicion was also expressed by the Indonesia Budget Center on Sunday.

The ICW also accused Fauzi of using the regional funds for pork-barrel projects. The respected graft watchdog recorded that Rp 9.75 billion of the gubernatorial budget was allocated for activities that popularized the governor, such as community meetings.

The administration allocated Rp 1.2 billion for speech scripts, which is far higher than the Rp 200 million allocated for the LBH.

LBH director Nurkholis Hidayat acknowledged that his organization did not have hard evidence to support the allegations, but said it was hard to ignore suspicions.

According to ICW research, local administrations sometimes misappropriated regional budgets by distributing aid to bogus institutions, double recipients, institutions linked to incumbents and people with obscure identities.

Fauzi’s campaign leader, Makmun Amin, denied that his campaign team had used the Jakarta administration’s budget for campaign activities. “We have nothing to do with the budget. The Foke-Nara team has used the candidates’ personal funds for their campaign activities so far,” said Makmun, adding that his team had just started to collect donations from supporters.

He made clear, however, that Fauzi had to do his duty as governor. “If he attends an event without our initiative, it means that he merely does his job as the Jakarta governor. Do we have to ban a governor from meeting his people?” quipped Makmun.

According to political observer Yunarto Wijaya, candidates’ campaign budgets for the Jakarta gubernatorial election can reach billions to hundreds of billions of rupiah.

“If winning a single vote needs an average of Rp 25,000, it will cost around Rp 75 billion to get 3 million votes,” said Yunarto, adding that the levels of the costs depended on many aspects.

He said that for an incumbent, the cost could be low because he did not have to spend much money to make himself known. However, “if the incumbent is endorsed by political parties, he will have to spend more on buying ‘the boat’,” he said, referring to the parties that support him.(cor)