Tony Hotland, Jakarta – It was President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's third state-of-the-nation address, but whopping figures and complicated words go in one ear and out the other for those battling the harsh realities of life, observers said.

Yudhoyono delivered the annual speech Thursday, stressing next year's development programs would be focused across eight fields, including elevated investment and bureaucracy reform, disaster management, pain-free access to healthcare and education, graft combat and bird flu mitigation.

"I thought it was a nicely-crafted speech that touched on the major issues the administration is facing," said Golkar Party deputy Ferry Mursyidan Baldan. "What's important is to get the plans out there and make them tangible."

Zulkifli Hasan from the National Mandate Party (PAN) said he concurred on the extensive range of the issues brought up in the speech, but he said he took notes on the details of how the government would accomplish its plans.

Both lawmakers said the 2008 plans had been in place for the last two years and were merely a detailed version of Yudhoyono's 2004 presidential campaign. They said his leadership failure had so far been blamed on a string of natural and man-made disasters since he came to power.

"It's indeed difficult to realize plans when something as big as the tsunami or the Sidoarjo mudflow comes about," Sulkifli said. "The response should've been a crystal-clear disaster management, which we have yet to see."

Legislator Effendi Choirie from the National Awakening Party (PKB) said Thursday's speech lacked assertion and details on some of the issues. "He did not touch on the substance of the resolutions, such as the Sidoarjo mudflow or the government's (ongoing) failure to allocate 20 percent of the budget to the education sector," Effendi said.

In his speech, Yudhoyono said he would create a government-sanctioned team for handling disasters and said he had been given the wrong impression about the Sidoarjo mud flow compensation process. The firm responsible for the mudflow is affiliated with Yudhoyono's minister and campaign investor Aburizal Bakrie.

Communication analyst Effendi Ghazali said the speech "served as a pale justification" for the President's work, but should have been a "crucial attempt to elaborate the core problems being faced or to specify the solution plans".

Lawmakers also pointed to bureaucracy reform as a priority because it was the root cause behind the country's high-economy and poor investment appeal.

Yudhoyono said in his speech that after three years in office, only a few institutions were worth mentioning for their bureaucracy reform – the Finance Ministry, the Supreme Court, the Office for State Minister of Administrative Reform and the Supreme Audit Agency.