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s the 2015 Jakarta budget dispute escalates, Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama has encouraged his subordinates to join him in the fight for transparency.

Speaking before hundreds of city officials at City Hall in Central Jakarta on Wednesday, Ahok thanked his subordinates for upholding their commitment to implementing the electronic budgeting system without making compromises with '€œcorruptors'€ and asked that they continue to fight for transparency.

'€œToday, I want to ask everyone not to fight for me, but to fight for transparency. To fight against markups and dubious allocations,'€ Ahok told hundreds of officials, who cheered in agreement.

Ahok went on to say that dubious allocations were often blamed on the city administration although city councilors also took part. He said that many civil servants had been jailed for those reasons, naming former Public Works Management Water Management Unit head Fahrurrozi, who has been jailed for his involvement in a water filtration equipment procurement case.

Ahok claimed councilors had forced Fahrurrozi, who Ahok said was '€œkind and intelligent'€, to include the allocations.

'€œIn cases like this, city officials would be the one who carry all the blame because they agreed to input the allocations. I doubt any of you want to end up like this, that'€™s why we need to fight for transparency,'€ he said.

During the occasion, Ahok gave excerpts of two versions of the budget '€” the city administration'€™s e-budgeting version and the city council'€™s version '€” to all officials, and asked that they compare them to one another. He asked that the officials earmark all the differences and return the documents to him.

The officials quickly got to work in groups based on district, sitting on the floor of the meeting hall and perusing the two versions of the draft budgets. Each group received only parts of the drafts related to their subdistrict.

Each version of the draft budget filled about 6,000 pages of A4 paper.

The officials said they had found many dubious allocations in the City Council'€™s version of the budget that were not as they had requested and discussed at the subdistrict level. For example, West Jakarta'€™s Cengkareng Barat subdistrict head, Imbang Santoso, said that the councilors'€™ budget had many allocations that were '€œunnecessary and never even discussed'€.

'€œIn my subdistrict, the city councilors allocated millions of rupiah for fire extinguishers, a water suction machine, waste cutting machine and decorations for the subdistrict office gate. We currently don'€™t need any of this,'€ Imbang told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the event.

The allocations, he said, totaled up to Rp 485 million in his subdistrict alone. Identical allocations were also found in West Jakarta'€™s East Cengkareng.

'€œOf course I support Pak Ahok. I know what'€™s right and what'€™s wrong, and I know Pak Ahok is right this time,'€ he said.

Central Jakarta'€™s Cempaka Putih Timur subdistrict head, Sulastri, said that some important allocations in her area were completely erased. '€œFor example, the councilors deleted allocations for disaster mitigation as well as health facility maintenance and procurement,'€ she said.

Ahok urged all his subordinates to keep up their work and asked for their patience in the dispute.

'€œThe city councilors are underestimating me because I don'€™t have support from any political party and I'€™m not a Jakartan or a Muslim. But let me assure you one thing; I would rather die than compromise with corruptors,'€ he said.