Megawati pays a visit to palace compound

JAKARTA (JP): President Megawati Soekarnoputri visited the presidential palace in Jakarta on Sunday, one day before she officially starts using it as her future presidential office.

In the three-hour impromptu visit, Megawati was accompanied by her husband Taufik Kiemas, daughter Puan Maharani and spokesman Bambang Kesowo. They arrived at the State Palace at 10 a.m.

This is the first visit by Megawati to the palace since she was appointed the country's fifth president on July 23.

She inspected almost all the rooms at the palace, including the quarters of the presidential security guards inside the palace compound.

The Wisma Negara (state guesthouse), which used to be the building for accommodating visiting foreign heads of state, was also one of the facilities that Megawati checked thoroughly.

One of the presidential employees said that the President complained about the palace's lack of tidiness and ordered staff to clean up the entire complex within a week.

At the end of the tour, the President then held a small celebration by having lunch with her husband and presidential guards, with special rice cone dishes in one of the rooms at the State Palace.

Megawati grew up at the palace as she was the eldest daughter of founding president Sukarno. Many expect her to be very pleased to return and live inside the Palace.

However, it was earlier reported that so far she had no intention to reside there.

During the tour, Megawati took a moment to inspect one of the huge mirrors placed at the entrance of Merdeka Palace, where she made a point of looking for a bullet hole.

The bullet hole under the mirror was made during Sukarno's tenure in the 1950s, when an Air Force pilot shot at the palace from a Mig-17 plane.

Megawati is officially scheduled to start using the State Palace as her office at 10 a.m. on Monday, but it was not clear whether the plan would change because she had complained about the cleanliness of the place.

Megawati is not going to use the Bina Graha presidential office, but will temporarily choose one of the rooms inside the State Palace as her office until the museum building, which is currently under renovation inside the complex, is ready for her official office.

Bina Graha will later be transformed into a museum, to accommodate precious items, including the tokens of appreciation to previous presidents, due to heavy traffic near the building. (dja)