Presidential hopeful Akbar Tanjung came under fire at a lunch with the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club Wednesday, struggling to answer questions on corruption and details of his promise to fix the economy.

Tanjung started out strongly at an event whose audience was peppered with foreign diplomats keen to see the Golkar Party chairman in action.

He made much of the party's leading position in the polls, saying late votes would come from outside Java and tend to favor Golkar. He predicted a Golkar presence of between 140 and 160 seats in the coming parliament, compared to its present 120 seats.

He was confident, he said, that Golkar would win the presidency, since the party had 32 years of experience of government and was the only one capable of bringing Indonesia out of its crisis. He said a Golkar-led government would concentrate on improving the security position in order to make conditions better for foreign investment and said the military would have more facilities and leeway to do the job.

The need to boost the economy was urgent, Tanjung said, because Indonesia's growth rate was lagging behind that of other countries and unemployment was a major problem.

Above all, he said, Golkar was a party of harmony and tolerance. "Building harmony and tolerance in Indonesian politics and society is our main goal."

Once a presidential candidate had been decided at the party convention on April 20, "we will then start to discuss intensively the process of forming a coalition" for the presidency, he said.

But, he admitted, it would not be easy to form a coalition because everyone wanted to be president. "Ibu Megawati wants to be president, Amien Rais wants to be president and has already set up a new axis. Bambang Yudhoyono is very popular now and we hear he is going to make a coalition with Gus Dur [Abdurrahman Wahid] but we know Gus Dur himself wants to be president."

Then came question time, with the first probe suggesting that he was unelectable because of the smear from his corruption case. Tanjung asked for the question to be repeated three times before telling the audience that "you know the Supreme Court has decided that I am free. We have to appreciate the decision of the Supreme Court. We have to appreciate the supremacy of the law."

"I don't have any feeling that people don't like me, I don't think it is a problem," he said. He promised credible figures for positions such as the attorney general.

The next question asked for detail on how a Golkar government would solve Indonesia's security problems. Again, the answer was less than satisfying, with Tanjung stating only that Golkar had always taken a tough line on terrorism.

He sidestepped the issue of rebellious provinces such as Aceh and Papua and made no response to a question on whether he would ban the hard-line group Jemaah Islamiyah.

Next in the firing line was the economy. He said he would appoint a strong cabinet and make economic revitalization a priority. Asked for specifics, he said he would continue the privatization program, but would select appropriate companies and set a list of priorities for privatization.

The audience was more impressed by a promise to streamline the investment process and reduce the bureaucratic hurdles faced by business.

Also a crowd-pleaser was a promise to resign as chairman of Golkar if he became president. "If you are at the same time the chairman of a party I think there will be a conflict of interest," he said.

Tanjung declined to name any potential vice-presidential running mate, saying that would only be revealed after the party convention.

But, he said, Golkar had every reason to continue its drive to take the presidency. "We have worked hard since 1999. I think we are quite confident if our vote is quite high even though it is not so easy. We have to compete with someone quite popular but we are the only party in Indonesia that has a machinery like us. If you want to win the election, you have to have a machinery."