Ukky Primartantyo, Surakarta – Demonstrators from a number of different groups held a protest action at the Gladag Surakarta traffic circle in the Central Java city of Solo on Thursday January 28.

The 300 or so people, who came from the Surakarta Muhammadiyah University, the Surakarta March 11 University (UNS), the Volunteers of Democracy in Struggle (Repdem) and the Indonesian Muslim Students Action Front (KAMMI), were demanding that Yudhoyono and Boediono resign.

UMS Student Executive Council (BEM) President Mochammad Nur said that Yudhoyono and Boediono should be impeached. "We no longer trust the SBY-Boediono administration. So they should resign", he said during a break in the action.

During the protest, the students set fire to bundles of harvested rice as a symbol of the death of democracy and the Indonesian people's sovereignty. The students also burnt tyres in the middle of the road.

UNS BEM President Bery Nur Arif meanwhile gave Yudhoyono and Boediono's first 100 days a red report card, saying both had failed to fulfill priority targets such as improving people's welfare, resolving cases of gross human rights violations from 1965 until now, investigating the Bank Century scandal and eradicating the judicial mafia.

[Abridged translation by James Balowski.]