Attacked by Islamists, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama leads the fight for transparency and savings, tells Public Works officials to trim their budgets by 25 per cent and improve cost management. He also posted the video of the meeting online earning more than a million views and thousands of comments.

Jakarta (AsiaNews) - A 46-minute video showing Jakarta Deputy Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama getting tough with public works officials has gone viral on YouTube, getting more than a million views since it was posted a week ago, with thousands of comments urging Ahok (the deputy governor's nickname) to pursue the battle against graft and in favour of greater transparency in public works contracts. For the deputy governor, this is a personal victory after weeks of specious criticism and personal attacks by Islamists, who harassed the Christian political leader and Jakarta's current governor, Joko Widodo (aka Jokowi), a liberal Muslim.

The video, posted on the capital's website, shows the budget discussions of the Department of Public Works on 8 November.

Across the country, this is a controversial domain, characterised by shady deals, graft and embezzlement involving dishonest officials, unscrupulous entrepreneurs and politicians all too happy to benefit certain business groups.

During the meeting with department officials, the deputy governor is seen cutting planned budget expenditures by 25 per cent.

"The costs of public works projects are too high," Basuki Tjahaja Purnama said. Rough calculations show that "budgets can be cut by as much as 40 per cent, but we are only asking for 25 per cent."

In his intervention, he offered two solutions. In the first case, the "budget is cut;" in the second, the "we cancel the project."

In the second case, he said he would look into all previous public works projects and ask the Corruption Eradication Commission and the Attorney General's Office to inspect them in order to weed out bad deals and generate some savings.

The deputy governor also said that he asked that the video be posted online to let people know that from now on, under Jokowi's leadership, all Jakarta budget discussions would be made transparent.

"I'm sorry but I'm really disturbed when someone steals the people's money," he said to explain his decision.

His initiative was met with popular support, as indicated by comments sent to the daily The Jakarta Globe.

"Halleluiah!" This is wonderful news indeed," said one Asogenie. Echoing him, TheSplodge wrote, "What I like about this is that people can see that honest politicians bring real benefits to the public." Similarly, one reader called jchay added that "We desperately need more positive stories like this, stories of courage, values, integrity! So that more Indonesians don't feel sick and hopeless despite all the overwhelming signs of hopelessness from the so-called civil servants and hard-liners FPI!"

The FPI or Islamic Defence Front is a group that espouses a fundamentalist view of Islam, and has sought to limit freedom and shut down churches and Christian institutions. 

 

• indonesia
• jakarta
• islam
• christians
• muslims
• corruption
• transparency
• extremism
• rights