TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok) has been dragged into a whirlpool of bribery charges by reclamation developers over his decision to impose additional contributions to the local government without any legal basis. The Jakarta governor claims it was his discretion to set the additional contributions necessary for accelerated development.

He said the requirement for the additional contributions as a precondition for issuing the reclamation permits was not bartering. "A barter would be if I benefited from it," he declared. Refusing to be specifically interviewed on this, Basuki was willing only to answer the questions submitted by Tempo reporters Ananda Teresia and Erwan Hermawan at two different opportunities on Wednesday and Thursday last week.

What was your reason for asking additional contributions?

I had one with a gubernatorial decree.

And the basis for your discretion?

When a regulation does not exist, an official may draft his own. Take the application of the building area coefficient penalty for the Mori Building company at Semanggi, Jakarta. Why wasn't there any fuss over that? The developer wanted to add more levels of the building, so I gave permission while drafting a regulation for a revised calculation of the sales value of the tax object (NJOP). Is that bartering? No way, pal. It's called an additional contribution. Why would I want to do this? Because there was approval and agreement. I think people are slandering me, claiming I received Rp300 billion in barter, as written on a mysterious pamphlet. The Corruption Eradication Commission [KPK] doesn't say that at all. They said I got it in return for doing away with the 15 percent additional contribution. If that is barter, I would really be stupid. Each island costs trillions. Why would I swap all that for only Rp300-odd billion?

But on the issue of discretion, did it only have a legal basis from September 2014

You are using that regulation to catch me. When the previous presidential decree was issued on reclamations, developers were also required to make contributions for flood prevention and so forth. But it was not clear. I did not want to create islands and then burden the regional budget to do it. Flood management here is still not sorted out, so why would I then want to create islands by spending my own budget? You want to turn things round, making out I was wrong to issue that before there was a regulation on discretion. If I hadn't formulated the figure of 15 percent but did issue them permits, wouldn't the DKI government have then been taken advantage of? If you lose out, that's not barter then, pal, is it?

So what is your response to the issue of your discretion?

That question is the right one to ask to defend the developers. You ought to get to the developers and tell them to make an issue of the additional contributions of 15 percent of the NJOP. If there's no legal basis, feel free to then sue the governor.

At a meeting on March 18, four developers got reclamation permits; the additional contributions were a requirement for issuing them. And that wasn't bartering?

No way. Those were additional contributions. In the Indonesian dictionary, barter means mutual exchange to gain something. For instance, if I had a regulation of 15 percent and I then granted a permit while doing away with the 15 percent and I got something in return, I could then be rightly accused of barter. This isn't because I stuck to the 15 percent requirement.

But wasn't the additional contribution a requirement for the reclamation permits to be issued?

If I was said to have bartered by offering a vague number, and I did confirm that; that could properly be called stupid. Then, on Kalijodo, I am accused of getting Rp6 billion. Building Kalijodo requires corporate social responsibility funding, actually. Would I really swap all that by doing away with the 15 percent?

What about the request to lower it to 5 percent?

On the other hand, he asked for the 15 percent to go away completely. So isn't he even crazier? Why am I angry? Because the 15 percent figure has been discarded. To build new embankments, all that has been changed for our land with a 5-percent levy being set by the central government.

Is that what being converted means?

It's called stone dead, pal. Embankments get lower and lower as time goes by. After two years, will the value of land on reclaimed islands have gone up or not? Later on the value of the land won't be fair, will it?

Because there is no legal basis?

So, if you talk like that, why did they then take the money anyway? You have to ask them, pal. I am the one who is insisting on fighting for it to be increased, but then I get accused of bartering. If you want to accuse me of that you must be consistent. On the one hand, people say the policy of the imposition of the 15 percent had no legal basis, as the regulation on discretion was only issued at the end of September 2014. Why, on the other hand, do you accuse me of bartering by doing away with the 15 percent?

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Read the full interview in this week's edition of Tempo English Magazine