Jakarta – Indonesian authorities have finally given approval for the citizens of Yogyakarta to install the popular head of the region's royal family as their governor, reports said Wednesday.

Hamengkubuwono X (the 10th), the Sultan of Yogyakarta, will be recognised as the governor once the appointment is agreed to by a plenary session of the local parliament as required by law, the Kompas daily said. "What remains to be done is for them to hold a plenary session to legalize the sole candidate," Home Affairs Minister Syarwan Hamid told the newspaper.

A senior home affairs ministry official had earlier said the spontaneous appointment last month of Hamengkubuwono X as governor of the territory of some 10,000 people was against the law. His announcement was greeted by protests and defiance in the city which has special autonomous status, with public leaders and officials threatening to hold a referendum to support the appointmen.

The special status of Yogyakarta, the cultural heart of Java province, was awarded by presidential decree in 1950 for its role in the struggle for independence from the Dutch colonial authorities. Under the decree, issued by then president Sukarno, Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX, the head of Yogyakarta's main royal house and father of the current sultan, was named the first governor of the territory.

But a 1974 decree by the government of former president Suharto stipulated that governors should be chosen by the parliament from a list of five government-approved candidates. "There should have been five (candidates) but it turns out that all five of them are the same (candidate), so be it...we agree on the sole candidate and we will legitimise it," Hamid said.

The instalation of Hamengkubowono X last month, had received the support of all five factions of the local parliament. The popular Sultan whose 18th century palace dominates the city, has retained moral authority there.

A pro-reform figure and a member of the country's highest legislative body, the People's Consultative Assembly, he is the eldest of 16 sons of Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX, who served once as Suharto's vice president. The post of governor fell free due to the illness of Prince Pakualam, a member of a minor royal house in Yogyakarta, who was appointed by presidential decree as acting governor after the death of the Sultan's father in 1988.