JAKARTA. Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama has said that the police’s move to name a city councillor and a former city councillor as suspects of graft in the procurement of uninterruptible power supply (UPS) machines confirmed allegations he made early this year.

“If they have been named suspects, it means my suspicion is founded. It is not just prejudice,” said Ahok as quoted by kompas.com, commenting on the suspect status of Fahmi Zulfikar and M Firmansyah in connection with the UPS machine procurement using funds from the 2014 city budget.

“At the time, I said that there are mark-ups [in the procurement], but they did not accept it,” said Ahok, adding that the councillors had even established a budgetary committee against him.

The decision by the National Police detective division was declared on Monday. Fahmi is a Hanura Party councillor and member of the council’s Commission E overseeing welfare. M. Firmansyah was a Democratic Party councillor during the 2009 to 2014 period.

Earlier this year, Ahok said he had found irregularities in the 2014 budget passed by the city council. The irregularities concerned the procurement of UPS units for dozens of state schools in West and Central Jakarta. The allocation for the UPS unit at each school amounted to as much as Rp 6 billion (US$445,810) per unit.

The police named two civil servants as suspects in the case — former infrastructure section head of the West Jakarta Education Agency, Alex Usman, and former head of the Central Jakarta Education Agency, Zainal Soleman.

Prosecutors stated in their indictment of Alex that Fahmi and Firmansyah had helped to pass the UPS procurement in the 2014 revised city budget at a price of Rp 6 billion in exchange for 7 percent of the total budget allocation of Rp 300 billion for the project.

Through their lawyers, both Fahmi and Firmansyah denied having received any money from the procurement.

Editor: Barratut Taqiyyah Rafie