Anti-government protests mark anniversary of Suharto's fall (Roundup)

May 21, 2008, 8:26 GMT

Jakarta - Marking the 10th anniversary of the late president Suharto's downfall, thousands of angry Indonesians took to the streets in cities across the country on Wednesday, venting their rage at a government plan to cut fuel subsidies and increase prices hike.

Amid continued fuel shortages in various cities on the main island of Java and on Sumatra, protestors demanded that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono step down for his failure to improve the economy.

In the East Java capital of Surabaya, dozens of protestors expressed their anger by setting fire to a picture of Yudhoyono and Vice President Jusuf Kalla, as police officers stood guard nearby.

'Reject any fuel price hike,' and 'Fuel price hikes - SBY Step Down,' read the unfurled banners, 'Down with Prices,' said another, reported the state-run Antara news agency.

In the Indonesian capital, around 15,000 students, youths and activists staged protest rallies at several locations, with the presidential palace the main target, said a Jakarta city police officer.

Thousands of protestors marched to the presidential palace, causing heavy traffic jams along Jakarta's main thoroughfares, while hundreds of students protested outside the parliament building in Jakarta, witnesses said.

In the eastern Indonesian province of North Maluku, police detained 14 students for questioning following a brief scuffle between protestors and policemen during an anti-fuel-price rally in the capital of Ternate. Three protesters were brought into police custody in the East Java city of Malang after a brief scuffle.

In response to the public's outcry over the planned fuel prices, Yudhoyono warned those who opposed the increase to stage only orderly and peaceful protests.

'In a democracy, protest rallies are normal and fair if they are conducted peacefully, but anarchic behaviour will only add to the problems,' Yudhoyono told a press conference.

The last time his government raised the prices of subsidised fuels in 2005, Yudhoyono - facing elections next year - promised that there would be no more price hikes until his five-year term in office expires in 2009.

But because of the big spike in global oil prices, Yudhoyono, who rose to power in 2004 as the country's first direct elected president, had little choice but to wean impoverished Indonesians off Asia's cheapest gasoline and heavily subsidised fuels.

In a bid to cope with the planned fuels price hike's impact on the poor, the government was set to pay the equivalent of 1.55 billion dollars in cash to about 19.1 million impoverished families.

Many of Indonesia's more than 225 million people live on less then 2 dollars a day and are already suffering from the impact of high food prices.

Domestic fuel price hikes are a sensitive subject in Indonesia, the world's fourth most-populous nation. In the past, subsidy cuts have led to social unrest and a big fuel price increase was the spark that triggered rioting that eventually toppled late autocrat Suharto in 1998.

In South Sulawesi, regional military commander Major General Djoko Susilo Utomo warned that violent demonstrators would be shot by police.

Anti-government rallies took place in more than a dozen cities, including in Semarang and Yogyakarta of central Java, Pekanbaru in eastern Sumatra, Samarinda and Pontianak on the Indonesian portion of Borneo Island.

Indonesia is the only Asia-Pacific member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), but has turned into a net importer of crude in recent years due to sharply declining output.