Aceh council accepts governor's report
Nani Afrida, The Jakarta Post/Banda Aceh
Defying public protest, 54 of the total 55 councillors of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam council accepted on Saturday the accountability report of the expenditure of Aceh's 2003 budget.
The acceptance paves the way for embattled Aceh Governor Abdullah Puteh, who is a graft suspect, to continue as governor until 2005, when his term comes to an end.
Four factions of the council fully accepted the accountability report during a plenary meeting held at the Aceh council. They were the Reform Alliance faction, Golkar faction, United Development Party faction and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle faction.
Only two factions accepted the report with conditions, namely the Indonesian Military/police faction and the National Mandate Party faction (PAN). Bustami Puteh from the PAN faction, for example, accepted the report, but suggested the governor investigate some development projects and investments that could be riddled with corruption, including the construction of the Deudap Island ship and the spending of general election funds.
The only dissenting opinion came from M. Nasir Djamil, a member of the Reform Alliance faction. Djamil, a councillor from the Prosperous Justice Party, said the Aceh governor had failed to improve the welfare of Aceh people during his term, so that his accountability report had to be rejected. The number of poor and unemployed people, for example, had not reduced between 2002 and 2003, but had been on the rise, he said, citing a figure released recently by a non-governmental organization (NGO).
Earlier, Akhirudin from the NGO Anticorruption Solidarity urged councilors to reject the accountability report. Last year, Aceh's poor comprised 40.39 percent of the population, up from 33.84 percent in 2002, he said. The population of Aceh is four million. Similarly, the number of unemployed people skyrocketed to 417,930 last year, from 363,398 a year earlier. The discouraging figures came amid increases to Aceh's budget, he said. Last year's provincial budget amounted to Rp 1.42 trillion (US$151 million), slightly higher than the budget in 2002, which was Rp 1.38 trillion.
Akhirudin also lashed out at the government for allocating education funds ineffectively. He said the government had used Rp 12 billion allocated for education to finance Aceh Cultural Week IV, which started on Aug. 19.
"The government should have allocated the money to finance the restoration of many schools in Aceh, which were damaged when they were set on fire, following the imposition of martial law in the province. The schools are far more important than the cultural fiesta," said Akhirudin. Abdullah Puteh ignored the accusations, saying that those views did not represent the majority of Aceh people.
Abdullah is accused of playing a central role in an alleged markup in the purchase of a helicopter by the Aceh administration in 2002, which reportedly cost the state Rp 4 billion (US$5.4 million) in losses.
He is currently facing questioning by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).