Indonesia's Megawati says ready to run again in 2009

JAKARTA, Sep 11 (Reuters) Former Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri has said she is ready to stand in the 2009 presidential elections, a member of her party said today.

She made the announcement yesterday at a national congress attended by 16,000 members of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the country's second largest political group, said party official Budiman Sudjatmiko.

''Megawati's vision is for economic and political independence.

It is with this vision that Megawati expressed her readiness to be nominated,'' Sudjatmiko told Reuters.

Megawati, the taciturn daughter of Indonesia's founding president Sukarno, took over from Abdurrahman Wahid in 2001 after he was sacked as president by the national assembly for incompetence.

She was replaced by Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a former general, after failing to win a second term in the country's first direct presidential election in 2004.

Megawati's administration was credited with bringing economic stability to the Southeast Asian country, one of the worst-hit by the regional economic crisis in the late 1990s.

Many blame her defeat in the 2004 polls on her aloof image.

Megawati became an iconic opposition figure in the dying days of the autocratic regime of former President Suharto, who resigned amid civil unrest in 1998, through her leadership of PDI-P.

REUTERS SBC HT1600