A mediation session held by the Home Ministry on Thursday failed to reconcile the Jakarta administration and the City Council, the meeting descending into unruly shouting before both parties stormed out.

The mediation was held at the ministry on Jl. Medan Merdeka Utara in Central Jakarta, with hundreds of city officials and councilors in attendance. Officials traveled in four buses from City Hall to the ministry, while the councilors arrived separately in private vehicles.

Early in the morning, before the closed-door meeting began, Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama took a seat behind a desk on a stage facing hundreds of chairs reserved for members of the city executive and legislature, followed by Council Speaker Prasetio Edi Marsudi, who sat next to him. The two conversed and laughed and shook hands for the cameras.

Despite this show of friendship, just three hours later loud voices were heard from inside the room recognized as belonging to both Ahok and the councilors. In a video of the last six minutes of the meeting uploaded to YouTube, councilors were seen shouting and pointing at Ahok, with the governor speaking in high-pitched tones and pointing his finger furiously.

'€œStupid!'€ yelled one councilor.

'€œAre you a governor or a thug?'€ screamed another. Loud expletives coming from the seating area directed at Ahok were also heard amid the din. Ahok exited through the back door with his bodyguards, while the councilors exited through the front.

Later in the day, speaking to reporters at City Hall, Ahok said that in the meeting he had asked his subordinates about their involvement in the council'€™s version of the budget.

'€œI merely asked my subordinates to raise their hands if they had proposed any of the allocations in the City Council'€™s version of the budget. None of them did. I also asked [West Jakarta mayor] Anas Effendi to tell everyone in the room whether or not he was involved in the UPS [uninterrupted power supply] allocation. Before he even opened his mouth, the councilors began yelling and cut off the discussion. They panicked because Anas was going to say no,'€ he said. Most of the allocations in question were for schools in West Jakarta.

Council deputy speaker Abraham '€œLulung'€ Lunggana said the meeting had been deadlocked and that Ahok had '€œintimidated his subordinates by asking such questions in front of hundreds of people'€.

Lulung also urged support from residents and asked that they stopped defending Ahok and '€œdo the right thing'€ by defending the councilors. He added that the councilors stood by their position that the UPS units allocated in their version of the 2015 budget had been discussed with the executive.

'€œThe governor went berserk in there. He forced his subordinates to say that they weren'€™t involved in the UPS allocations ['€¦] we wanted to defend the officials. Ahok can'€™t scold them in front of hundreds of people like that,'€ he said at the City Council building in Central Jakarta.

Meanwhile, ministry regional finance director general Reydonnyzar '€œDonny'€ Moenek said that in the wake of the failed mediation attempt, the ministry would continue to evaluate the draft 2015 budget sent by the city administration rather than that sent by the council and once finished would return the draft to the administration for changes to be made.

'€œAfter we return the document to the city administration, the executive and the legislature must sit down together to make the changes in the course of seven days. If not, the worst-case scenario is that Jakarta'€™s 2015 budget will be limited to the amount of the revised 2014 budget and programs will be adjusted,'€ Donny said. Jakarta'€™s revised 2014 budget was set at Rp 72.9 trillion (US$5.6 billion).

Two differing drafts of the 2015 budget, one from the Jakarta administration in PDF format and one from the council in XLS format, are available for the public to download at jakarta.go.id and ahok.org.

Ahok has insisted that the councilors made the changes to the draft budget alone and manually within three days after a council plenary session approved the draft on Jan. 27.

He alleged the councilors had resorted to the manual method because the budget was in an electronic format only accessible by a handful of officials.

However, he acknowledged that his subordinates had also been involved in making irregular allocations in the past, including UPS procurements for several schools in West and Central Jakarta in 2014.

Popular

RI, Australia strengthen partnership on taxing crypto assets

Analysis: Indonesia denies normalization with Israel to enter OECD

Citroen to produce electric cars in Indonesia