T

he campaign team of gubernatorial candidate Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said on Friday that it would not undermine the authorities in investigating the graft allegations leveled against the Surakarta mayor.

Head of Jokowi’s campaign team, Boy Sadikin, said in a statement that the allegations were a part of a smear campaign against Jokowi ahead of the Sept. 20 runoff.

Nevertheless, Boy said that the campaign was ready to provide any information needed by law enforcers. “We respect law enforcement in our country.”

On Thursday, a group of people calling themselves the Save Solo, Save Jakarta and Save Indonesia Team, reported Jokowi to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) for helping his subordinates, R, of the Surakarta Education, Youth and Sports Office, and BS, of the Surakarta Income, Finance and Asset Management Office, to commit graft.

The team’s advocate, M. Kalono, said that the officials had allegedly duplicated names of the recipients of educational funds from the Surakarta administration.

“The budget said that the fund was supposed to be channeled to 110,000 students. But, apparently there were many double entries. After the list was verified, only 65,000 were left on the list,” he said, adding that the administration allocated Rp 23 billion (US$2.4 million) in 2010 to the fund.

According to the team’s calculation, however, the administration only needed Rp 10.6 billion to fund 65,000 students. The administration only reported Rp 2.4 billion in leftover funds, while it should have been Rp 12.4 billion, Kalono said.

“Therefore, the state might have suffered losses between Rp 9.5 billion and Rp 13 billion due to the corruption. That was just the 2010 number. It happened again in 2011 and 2012.”

Kalono denied that the team’s report was a politically charged move to target Jokowi, saying that he did not personally know Jokowi’s opponent at the Sept. 20 runoff, incumbent Governor Fauzi Bowo.

It took so long for the team to report the case because they had just recently obtained the complete documentary evidence, he said.

Jokowi himself has denied the allegation, saying that the team used an earlier version of the verified data, not the latest one. He added that it was common for a candidate to be hit by smear campaigns ahead of the election day.

Jokowi himself is known for his clean image, having received the 2010 Bung Hatta Anticorruption Award, for his attempts to combat corruption, and obtained a good rating from the Transparency International Indonesia (TII).

His running mate, former East Belitung regent Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, is also accused of corrupt practices via an anonymous Twitter account @triomacan2000, who said that Ahok used the regent’s budget for his personal mining project.