Liberal former general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was sworn in as Indonesia’s president yesterday after winning a second five-year term with promises of economic growth and political reform.
The softly spoken leader swore on the Koran to uphold the Constitution during a ceremony in the national assembly in Jakarta which was broadcast around the archipelago of 234 million people.
“By Allah I swear I will adhere to the Constitution as faithfully as possible, and will commit myself to the country and the people,” Yudhoyono said.
PHOTO: AFP
A massive security blanket descended on the center of the capital, with about 20,000 police backed by armored vehicles on hand to secure the inauguration.
The event was attended by the leaders of Australia, Brunei, East Timor, Malaysia and Singapore, as well as senior officials from around the world.
Yudhoyono, 60, trounced former president Megawati Sukarnoputri in 2004 to become the mainly Muslim country’s first directly elected head of state since the fall of late military strongman Suharto in 1998.
He did it again in July, easily defeating Democratic Party of Struggle chief Megawati as well as his vice president, the Golkar Party’s Jusuf Kalla, to become the first Indonesian leader to be democratically re-elected.
Cementing his place as the figurehead of the post-Suharto reform era, Yudhoyono’s centrist Democratic Party won the most seats in parliament in April general elections just eight years after it was founded.
He has promised to crack down on corruption, boost infrastructure spending and advance bureaucratic reform.
As the world’s third-largest democracy, Indonesia is also seeking to play a greater role in multilateral forums such as the G20 and global talks on a new climate pact.
The doctor of agricultural studies — who likes to pen romantic ballads in his spare time — has also pledged to steer Southeast Asia’s biggest economy through the global downturn.
“The essence of our program for the next five years is to improve welfare, strengthen democracy and the legal system,” Yudhoyono said. “In the middle of the economic crisis, Indonesia can still grow positively. But we cannot stay idle, as our tasks are far from over.”
“Just like a ship moving forward, we will head through an ocean full of waves and storms,” he said, referring to volatile crude oil prices and stagnant investment.
The government has predicted economic growth of 4 percent to 4.5 percent this year, third only to China and India in the G20 club of rich and major developing countries. The economy grew 6.1 percent last year.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
The US government has banned US government personnel in China, as well as family members and contractors with security clearances, from any romantic or sexual relationships with Chinese citizens, The Associated Press (AP) has learned. Four people with direct knowledge of the matter told the AP about the policy, which was put into effect by departing US ambassador Nicholas Burns in January shortly before he left China. The people would speak only on condition of anonymity to discuss details of a confidential directive. Although some US agencies already had strict rules on such relationships, a blanket “nonfraternization” policy, as it is known, has
RSS