“Everything is messy now. All because the budget for the e-ID procurement was swindled,” Jokowi told reporters after visiting a furniture fair in Central Jakarta on Saturday.

(Read also: Golkar pledges full support for KPK in e-ID graft probe)

The e-IDs would have resolved many problems related to civil and population administration in the country of over 250 million people, the President said. He argued that the biometric cards could solve hassles in arranging passports and driving licenses and would help with solving other problems in banking, taxation and elections.

“Had we built the system well, all these problems could have been fixed,” Jokowi added.

The government rolled out eIDs during the administration of then president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2010 in an effort to integrate citizens’ data and information for banking, taxation and other civil purposes.

It was a move aimed at fixing population registration issues that had for years been hampered by hard-to-fix problems such as a person having more than one ID and fake IDs.

It was revealed during the first hearing of the graft case on Thursday that nearly half of the Rp 5.9 trillion (US$441 million) e-ID budget was allegedly embezzled by government officials, lawmakers and businesspeople.

In the first hearing of the trial for the first two suspects in the case, Irman and Sugiharto, Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) prosecutors claimed that 37 members of the House of Representatives Commission II, which oversees home affairs, dozens of other lawmakers and several Home Ministry officials took part in the alleged graft, which reportedly caused Rp 2.3 trillion in state losses.

Jokowi said there had been no significant changes in the population and civil management system so far because the budget for e-IDs, which would have improved the system, had been misappropriated.

He said the only change was that ID cards were now plastic rather than paper.

Before the case was revealed, people had complained about difficulties in obtaining e-IDs despite the government continuously pushing citizens to register for them. Many complained they had to wait for a long time before they could get a card.

Among the issues hampering the e-ID distribution is a shortage of blank biometric cards, a major component.

Fakhri Subqi, 28, who recently moved from Medan to Jakarta, said even two months after moving he had not been able to obtain an ID card, with officials at the office telling him “the blank cards for e-IDs are not yet available.”

Similarly, another resident, Alvin, 19, who came from Ternate but is now studying in Luwuk, Central Sulawesi, said he had to travel from Luwuk to Ternate on an overnight journey to arrange an ID card, only to be told that he could not have one because the local office did not have any blank cards.

President Jokowi said he was aware of the blank card shortage, which he said was a direct implication of the corruption case.

“Because of the e-ID case, [officials] at the Home Ministry are now being extra careful in doing anything,” Jokowi said.

The KPK had summonsed 32 Home Ministry officials for questioning, Jokowi said. Therefore, he apologized for possible disruptions in the future. “If there are problems [related to] blank cards, delays in [e-ID] distribution etc., we want to apologize.”

Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) researcher Tama S. Langkuan said on Wednesday that the corruption case would slow down e-ID distribution for all Indonesians. “Now everybody in the government is afraid and is really careful in doing their jobs because of the case,” Tama told The Jakarta Post.

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