Govt berated for budget abuse

Ridwan Max Sijabat and M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A legislator and an academic lashed out on Friday at the government and the House of Representatives for the morally reprehensible, and perhaps illegal, budget spending in the midst several crises.

Aberson Marle Sihaloho of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) berated government and House leaders for lacking a conscience when it came to caring about the people's suffering as evidenced in the way they had spent trillions of rupiah of reserve funds on the military and other projects instead of natural disasters, which they are supposed to be used for.

He was commenting on the controversial approval of reserve fund allocations by the House's budgetary committee.

Following a long discussion, the committee allowed the government to take Rp 1.6 trillion from the fund to finance the war in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (NAD), and other things that it was not supposed to.

The committee also approved the proposed usage of Rp 1.4 trillion to finance an extension of the military operation in Aceh and that of almost Rp 3 trillion to finance development projects conducted by the Regional Settlement and Infrastructure Ministry.

"This is a violation the 2003 state budget law that says the reserve funds should be used for natural disasters and emergencies such as riots and drought," he told The Jakarta Post here on Friday.

"What we are seeing now is that the government misuses the general reserve funds to finance activities outside its mandate and unbelievably, the budget committee approves these misuses," he said.

He also lamented the government's unwillingness and lack of concern to pay adequate attention to the millions of people adversely affected by the current drought, the Acehnese refugees, and the millions of children who will be uneducated because they cannot afford government school fees.

Of the Rp 1.6 trillion spent in the first phase, none was used to handle natural disasters.

Aberson, also a member of the budgetary committee, accused other factions of colluding with the government to allow these irregularities.

"Many projects with no relation to disasters are financed and not audited. The government and regional administrations don't offer public bidding for projects, so it is no secret that many legislators collude with regional heads," he lamented.

Meanwhile, Revrisond Baswir, an outspoken economist from Gadjah Mada University said the use of the funds was "a vicious conspiracy."

"This is not the first time the government and the House have betrayed the public with state funds. It happened before in the dubious settlement of the Bank Indonesian Liquidity support fund (BLBI) where taxpayers were given the bill," he said, referring to write-off of Rp 144.5 trillion (about US$17.6 billion) in emergency loans given out in 1997 and 1998 to a few tycoons.

He said what they had done was administrative manipulation to cover excessive non-budgetary spending.

Revrisond said there was little recourse for the public in the scandal as the House, which should keep the government accountable for such mismanagement had bowed down and joined in.

General reserve funds in 2003 state budget

Reserve funds Rp 8,239,570,000,000

A. Expenditures:

1. National Games Rp 25,000,000,000 2. Military operation in Maluku Rp 12,500,000,000 3. Military operation in NAD Rp 1,477,600,000,000 4. Handling of Iraqi crisis impacts Rp 27,000,000,000

B. Expenditure planning

1. Handling of natural disasters Rp 2,102,000,000,000 2. Rice-for-poor Rp 134,000,000,000 3. Handling of refugees Rp 161,000,000,000 4. Military operation in NAD Rp 1,452,400,000,000 5. Russian Sukhoi purchase Rp 698,130,000,000

* This data is based on the finance minister's Aug. 28 letter to House of Representatives