There are myriad reasons why Indonesia’s president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (often called SBY), ought to be worried as the days count down to the country’s presidential election on July 8th. Only a quarter of the measures he promised in 2004 to improve the investment climate have been implemented. Desperately needed infrastructure development has been sluggish. Legal and judicial reforms have been patchy. Little progress has been made on improving labour-market regulation. The armed forces are so under-financed that aircraft crashes have become a monthly occurrence.

Meanwhile official poverty and unemployment rates, at 14.2 per cent and 8.2 per cent respectively, are much higher than he promised when he was first elected. Health-service delivery is widely considered woeful. Religious minorities believe they are more fiercely persecuted than five years ago. Then there is the minor matter of the world’s worst recession in decades, which has taken its toll throughout South-East Asia’s export-oriented economies.

And, to the dismay of many, Mr Yudhoyono (pictured centre, above) chose as his campaign slogan “Lanjutkan”, which translates roughly as “More of the same”. “Yes, we can!” it isn’t.

Yet the former general with a PhD in agricultural economics appears to be anything but worried. The three-week campaign in the world’s third-largest democracy looks more like a stroll to a coronation than a scrap for survival.

If the opinion polls are correct - and they were pretty accurate before April’s legislative elections - Mr Yudhoyono is not only going to do far better than his two challengers, but is going to win outright with more than 50 per cent of votes cast and more than 20 per cent in half the country’s 33 provinces (a requirement in vast Indonesia to ensure presidents have some support everywhere). This would eliminate the need for a second-round run-off in September.

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