As President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono prepares to go into overdrive to trumpet the successes of his first 100 days in office, political observers are not viewing the government's alleged achievements with quite the same enthusiasm.

The overwhelming majority of analysts spoken to by the Jakarta Globe on Thursday not only said Yudhoyono's cabinet had failed to deliver on its much-hyped 100-day program, but had also failed to outline just exactly what it wanted to achieve in the first place.

Fajar Nursahid, a researcher with the Institute for Social and Economic Research, Education and Information (LP3ES), took another view altogether, saying that while he believed the government was overpromoting the program, most observers were expecting too much.

"Frankly, the programs are not that easy to measure, although they are catchy," Fajar said. He added that issuing claims that could not be proven only led to confusion among the public. "They need proof not words," he said.

Fajar, who labeled the 100-day program "overrated," said it was more important that the government used the momentum it had secured after Yudhoyono's landslide victory in both the legislative and presidential elections last year to form a solid basis for what it hoped to achieve in its five-year term.

"It is also important for the government to raise hopes for the people. But that's about it," he said.

Many analysts said the government seemed to have taken a step backward over the last 100 days as it struggled to overcome the fallout from a number of embarrassing scandals that may have toppled other governments in more developed nations.

Chief among them are the Bank Century bailout scandal and the controversial arrests of Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) deputy chairmen Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra M Hamzah,

Both controversies have tarnished Yudhoyono's image as a graft fighter, though other critics suggest the image was undeserved and that corruption, which Yudhoyono pledged to address during both his 2004 and 2009 election campaigns, remains as rampant as it ever was, despite the limited successes of the KPK.

Patra M Zen, chairman of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI), said the government was far from achieving the eradication of the judicial mafia, which Yudhoyono told the nation was his top priority after the alleged conspiracy involving senior law enforcement officials and case brokers to bring down the KPK emerged. No government official has ever been charged in connection with the scandal that rocked the country.

"I expected the government to issue a number of policies to lay down a strong legal foundation [to fight the endemic graft within law enforcement bodies], but apparently it is still far from meeting the people's expectations," Patra said.

Teten Masduki, secretary general of Transparency International Indonesia, was even more scathing, saying that efforts to eradicate the judicial mafia had instead "been declining over the last three months." He called the government's statements and eradication attempts superficial.

The government's pledge to reform the education sector is seen as another example of the cabinet's vague 100-day pledges. Suparman, coordinator of Education Forum, a nongovernmental organization, said the government had failed to reform the education sector.

"I don't see any of Ministry of National Education programs that are reform-orientated," Suparman said. "They did not even touch on the most debated issue at the moment: the national examination."

He said the ministry had chosen to focus on such 100-day initiatives as empowering school principals and supervisors, awarding scholarships, boosting the number of teachers in remote areas and promoting the nation's culture and traditions.

Ade Irawan, of Indonesia Corruption Watch, said the government's education programs were superficial and did not address basic problems. "It's OK to have the Internet in schools, but why don't they look at the schools first? Many of them are close to collapsing."