W

ith only three days left before the deadline, the Jakarta City Council postponed a meeting with the city administration'€™s budgeting team to discuss a Home Ministry evaluation of the draft 2015 City Budget, citing technical reasons.

The ministry has given the administration and council a week to iron out their differences and submit a revised draft budget by Friday.

The legislative and executive arms have been at odds for several weeks over different versions of the draft budget. Jakarta Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama has accused the councilors of including '€œsneaky items'€ in their draft, worth Rp 12.1 trillion out of the total Rp 73.08 trillion.

The ministry acknowledged the one sent by the executive branch, but criticized several allocations, such as employee spending, which according to the ministry was set too high.

The first meeting to discuss the ministry'€™s recommendations was held on Tuesday, hosted by the council'€™s budgetary committee at the council building in Central Jakarta, and led by committee head Prasetio Edi Marsudi, also council speaker. The city was represented by city secretary Saefullah, Jakarta Financial and Asset Management (BPKAD) head Heru Budi Hartono and Jakarta Development Planning Board (Bappeda) head Tuti Kusumawati.

The majority of agency heads and mayors were present, along with hundreds of echelon III and IV officials. Executives took their seats in the designated meeting room before the scheduled meeting at 10 a.m., while only a handful of legislators attended and most were 50 minutes late.

Prasetio, however, cut the meeting short and postponed discussions, stating that the officials had come unprepared, as they did not provide the councilors with hard copies of the draft budget.

'€œWe need hard copies, not soft, one for each of the nine factions. Therefore the meeting has been postponed until Wednesday,'€ he told officials during the meeting. The draft budget consists of roughly 6,600 pages.

Prasetio went on to say that as the head of the budgetary committee, he would make an effort to reach an agreement with the executive so that the administration'€™s 2015 budget would not be limited to the revised 2014 budget, which amounted to Rp 72.9 trillion (US$5.5 billion).

Further, council deputy speaker Mohammad Taufik of the Gerindra Party said the executive was obligated to provide the councilors with a copy of the draft budget. '€œWe need a copy, or else how are we to proceed with discussions? We can'€™t discuss anything only with the ministry'€™s evaluation,'€ Taufik told reporters after the five-minute meeting.

Saefullah, however, was defensive and said that the councilors should have come prepared.

'€œWe are prepared; the councilors are the ones who are not prepared. The draft 2015 City Budget has been uploaded to our website where everyone can see it, including the councilors,'€ Saefullah told reporters after the meeting.

The administration has uploaded both versions of the city budget '€” the executives'€™ PDF e-budgeting version and the legislators'€™ Microsoft Excel version '€” to their official website, jakarta.go.id.

Ahok also took a defensive stance, saying that the councilors were buying time and that they had deliberately postponed the meeting. '€œOf course they don'€™t want to discuss our budget. If they discuss and agree to it, then they would have to admit that they were wrong and that their right of inquiry was irrelevant, and they'€™ll be embarrassed.'€

Although Ahok refused to compromise with the council'€™s draft budget, he acknowledged that his version of the budget was flawed as it included Rp 1.5 trillion worth of sneaky items. Ahok said that there were irrational allocations for car rental, uninterruptible power supply (UPS) devices and office stationary, among many others.