Thousands of Indonesians rallied Wednesday in several major cities under tight security to mark international anti-corruption day, slamming the government over a bank bailout scandal. Protestors denounced President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono over the rescue of failed lender Bank Century, which is under parliamentary investigation after the country's top auditor found strong indications of "violations".
In Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province, thousands of protestors clashed briefly with police who fired warning shots and water cannon after being pelted by rocks, an AFP correspondent saw. Photographs of Yudhoyono were torched in the country's second largest city Surabaya of East Java and in Palu, a city in Central Sulawesi where up to 2,000 protestors gathered.
"SBY has to be held responsible over all corruption cases in Indonesia including the Bank Century scandal," a demonstrator named Ahmad told a crowd of thousands of people in Surabaya referring the president's nickname. "The president should step down if his government fails to investigate the Bank Century case thoroughly," he said. In the capital Jakarta, thousands rallied outside the presidential palace, which was blocked off by razor wire with hundreds of police standing guard.
Students and anti-graft activists carried banners urging the president to act. One sign read: "90 percent of law enforcers here are rotten." "We urge the president to show his commitment by giving testimony to the parliamentary inquiry team and uncover the Bank Century scandal," one demonstrator told the crowd.
Protestors also urged Vice President Boediono and Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati to resign over their roles in approving the bank rescue late last year, which the officials said was necessary to stave off economic failure. Yudhoyono has angrily rejected accusations that some of the bailout worth 6.7 trillion rupiah (710 million dollars) was channelled into his re-election campaign. The president won another term in July with 60 percent of the vote on the back of a promise to stamp out corruption.
Yudhoyono appealed late Tuesday for people to demonstrate peacefully, saying his government was serious about tackling graft. He previously expressed fears that unnamed forces could hijack the Jakarta rally to topple him. The liberal ex-general has also been hit by an alleged plot by police and prosecutors to frame two top officials of the Corruption Eradication Commission, considered to be one of the country's cleanest institutions Indonesia ranked 111 out of 180 countries on Transparency International's corruption index for 2009.
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