Abusing Regulations for More Village Funds
Some regional officials are alleged to have manipulated regulations in order to secure more village funds. Supervision and verification should be tightened to overcome this problem.
KONAWE, KOMPAS – To gain a larger allocation of village funds, some regional officials allegedly manipulated the regulatory procedures for forming new villages. A Kompas investigation found at the end of November that this practice was prominent in Konawe regency, Southeast Sulawesi.
Regional officials in Konawe allegedly had a hand in manipulating a bylaw on the formation of new villages.
Konawe Regency Regulation No. 7/2011 on the Amendment to Regional Regulation No. 2/2011 on the Formation and Definitive Establishment of Villages in Konawe Regency was backdated to give it the appearance that it had been drafted and endorsed in 2011, a year before the government declared a moratorium on the establishment of new villages in 2012. However, the bylaw was drawn up in mid-2015, after the government had already adopted the village funds allocation policy.
Including Rp 219.3 billion for Konawe villages.
The fraudulently issued Regional Regulation No. 7/2011 contains regional codes for 56 villages in Konawe. The regulation, along with the Southeast Sulawesi provincial administration’s recommendation, was the reference by which the Home Ministry issued the regional codes necessary for the allocation of the village funds.
The disbursement of the funds for the 56 villages in Konawe commenced in early 2017 and has continued to date. In 2017, the government allocated Rp 60 trillion to 74,549 beneficiary villages across the country, including Rp 219.3 billion for Konawe villages.
The fraudulently backdated bylaw was uncovered when Kompas tracked down the officials who were involved in its formulation. One of these officials is the 2014-2015 administrative head of Konawe regency, Jumrin Pagala, who is now in detention in Southeast Sulawesi. Jumrin was the one who arranged the signing of Regional Regulation No. 7/2011 and forwarded the document to the Southeast Sulawesi administration, facilitating the submission of the proposed regional codes for 56 Konawe villages to the Home Ministry.
‘Following orders’
Jumrin, who is currently serving a 20-month jail term for budgetary fraud that was committed while he was the acting head of the Konawe Education Office, said that Regional Regulation No. 7/2011 was drawn up as ordered by his superior. “Yes, my direct superior was obviously the regional secretary (then Achmad Setiawan). It was to be reported to the regent (then Kery Konggoasa), but the regent was not in his office [at the time],” he said.
Regional Regulation No. 7/2011 was signed in 2011 by Lukman Abunawas, the 2008-2013 Konawe regent, and Irawan Laliasa, the Konawe regency secretary. When the Konawe administration proposed the addition of the 56 villages to be given regional codes in June 2015, Lukman was the secretary of the Southeast Sulawesi administration. Lukman is now the deputy governor of Southeast Sulawesi.
Yes, my direct superior was obviously the regional secretary (then Achmad Setiawan).
Jumrin recalled that on one afternoon in 2015, he took the proposed amendment on the 56 villages to Lukman’s residence to obtain his signature. On a separate day, Jumrin took the bylaw to Irawan’s residence for his signature. Although they were no longer officials of Konawe regency, they both signed the document.
After obtaining their signatures, Jumrin delivered the proposed amendment and Regional Regulation No. 7/2011 to the Southeast Sulawesi administration, where Konawe regency secretary Achmad Setiawan signed the amendment.
The proposed amendment was later incorporated in the Southeast Sulawesi governor’s recommendation to the Home Ministry, which recommended that regional codes be assigned to 55 Konawe villages. The recommendation excluded one village listed in the proposed amendment, Wiau village in Routa district, because it was settling a border dispute between Konawe regency and North Kolaka regency.
Achmad claimed he had only attached the proposed amendment to the regional regulation as provided by Jumrin and the then-Konawe legal head, Badarudin, and that he did not examine the authenticity of the amendment. “They provided it. I had no idea if it (the regulatory amendment) was genuine or not,” he said.
Upon requesting his confirmation, Lukman denied that he had ever signed Regional Regulation No. 7/2011 and claimed that someone had falsified his signature. “I was the (Konawe) regent in 2011, but they drafted (the regional regulation) in 2015. The blame should go to whoever used the funds after I was no longer regent,” said Lukman.
Meanwhile, Irawan made no attempt to deny that he had signed Regional Regulation No. 7/2011. However, he could not recall when he had signed the regulation. “I don’t remember, but I admit the resemblance. The one thing that is certain is that no revision was made to Regional Regulation No. 7/2011 in 2011,” he said.
Badarudin denied that he had provided Regional Regulation No. 7/2011 to Achmad and Jumrin, and claimed that he had no knowledge of the amendment. Konawe Regent Kery Saiful Konggoasa could not be reached for confirmation. Kery instead communicated through his adjutant, Fauzi, saying that he was not yet ready to be interviewed because only the Home Ministry was authorized to respond to questions on Konawe’s village funds.
Unregistered
Konawe legal head Apono ascertained that Regional Regulation No. 7/2011 had not been recorded as an amendment to Regional Regulation No. 2/2011 on the Formation and Definitive Establishment of Villages in Konawe Regency. Regional Regulation No. 7/2011 appears is recorded in the Konawe legal registry as a bylaw on accountability for the 2010 regional budget of Konawe.
Apono said the responsibility for the fictitious regional regulation could not be laid at the feet of the Konawe regency administration, because the Southeast Sulawesi provincial administration and the Home Ministry’s Directorate General of Rural Administration Development had conducted no factual verification on the 56 Konawe villages. The fictitious bylaw was even used as a reference in granting regional codes under Home Ministerial Regulation No. 137/2017.