T

he North Sumatra provincial administration and Regional Legislative Council (DPRD) have expressed concern that the recent arrest in relation to graft cases of the province'€™s leader and key councillors will hamper public services and slow local development due to the absence of definitive leadership.

Speaking at a meeting with the provincial administration'€™s budget team on Wednesday, North Sumatra councillor Sutrisno Pangaribuan called on the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to immediately wrap up its ongoing investigation into graft cases implicating suspended North Sumatra Governor Gatot Pujo Nugroho and several current and former councillors.

'€œWe are asking the KPK to quickly conclude its investigation so that local councilors will no longer be disrupted by interrogations,'€ he said.

The Wednesday meeting, which was scheduled to discuss the revised regional budget (APBD-P) for this year, was supposed to start at 2 p.m., but was delayed for almost two hours after KPK investigators visited the DPRD'€™s headquarters to raid several offices.

The meeting began while the investigators carried out their raid but took place in a tense atmosphere.

Earlier this week, the KPK detained North Sumatra DPRD speaker Ajib Shah and three other former and current local legislators for allegedly accepting bribes from Gatot for the cancellation of inquiries into irregularities in the administration'€™s social aid fund disbursement.

The Attorney General'€™s Office (AGO), which is currently investigating the alleged social aid fund embezzlement, named the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) politician Gatot a suspect in the case last week.

Apart from Ajib, a Golkar Party politician, the KPK named Chaidir Ritonga, also from Golkar, Sigit Pramono Asri of the PKS and Saleh Bangun of the Democratic Party.

Ajib served as a DPRD member for the 2009 to 2014 period prior to securing the DPRD leadership last year, replacing Saleh, who worked alongside Chaidir and Sigit.

Sutrisno, who represents the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), expressed pessimism that the DPRD would be able to immediately approve the proposed APBD-P, as many councillors have been repeatedly summoned by the KPK and the AGO for questioning regarding the graft cases.

'€œMany of us cannot concentrate on the ongoing budget deliberation. ['€¦] One of the consequences is that some development programs will be disrupted,'€ he said.

Acting North Sumatra governor Tengku Erry Nuradi also acknowledged the impact of the cases on the performance of the administration.

'€œThey have certainly hampered the local governance. Apart from the APBD-P, we also still have the 2016 regional budget [awaiting deliberation],'€ he said.

Earlier, political observer Shohibul Anshor Siregar from North Sumatra'€™s Muhammadiyah University urged law enforcers to continue cracking down on graft in North Sumatra, despite arrests leading to potential vacuums of power.

'€œLocal officials must learn from these graft cases so that they can prevent the same thing from happening in the future,'€ he said.