Megawati pays a visit to palace compound

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)