Former Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri will run against President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Vice President Jusuf Kalla in elections in July.
The poll line-up was finalised after a deadline to register expired on Saturday and Megawati, who is teaming up with former general Prabowo Subianto, is currently running behind Yudhoyono in the opinion polls.
Here are five facts on Megawati.
- Megawati, 62, is the daughter of Indonesia's charismatic first president, Sukarno. Her unparalleled political pedigree has ensured strong support, particularly in Java and Bali, although she lacks her father's oratory skills and tends to be rather aloof and avoid public speeches.
-She became a symbol of popular resistance in the dying days of Suharto's presidency, but even though her PDI-P party won the most votes in the 1999 election, Megawati was outmanoeuvred by Abdurrahman Wahid and ended up as his vice president. When Wahid was ousted in 2001, she took over the presidency, but her lacklustre performance on the economy and tackling graft is considered to have lost her the 2004 election to Yudhoyono.
- Megawati has gradually turned the PDI-P party into a family empire. One close adviser is her third husband, Taufiq Kiemas, a wealthy businessman who was recently hospitalised for exhaustion. During her presidency, he negotiated a natural gas contract with China that many Indonesians considered disadvantageous to the national interest.
Indonesian media have reported that Megawati' s daughter, Puan Maharani, is now being groomed as her successor.
- Megawati holds a firm secular, pluralist stance, which has distanced her from some of the Islamic and Islamist parties. She and PDI-P opposed last year's anti-pornography law on the grounds that it discriminated against minorities. A staunch nationalist who supports the military, Megawati has said she thinks regional autonomy has gone too far and could well try to claw back some of the power given to the provinces if she became president again.
- Even if she loses the election -- and an opinion poll put her well behind Yudhoyono at 12 percent to his 67 percent -- Megawati has proposed a coalition with former President Suharto's political machine, Golkar, along with minor parties that could form a formidable opposition bloc in parliament. Her relations with Yudhoyono remain notoriously cool after she is reported to have never forgiven him for leaving her cabinet to run against her, but her PDI-P party has also held talks with the his Democrat Party on possible collaboration.
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