Wiranto, Indonesia's former armed forces commander and an indicted war criminal, says he is a man of peace and Indonesia's best presidential candidate in this year's election.
Dressed in a crisp dark suit, the suave former general addressed a crowd of foreign journalists and diplomats last week as part of a highly organised campaign to win Indonesia's first direct presidential elections.
Wiranto said he was running for the presidency because he realised that reformasi, or democratic reform, had delivered few concrete results.
'Indonesians are killing each other. In the last five years this country has lost a lot of energy, thought and opportunities to rebuild Indonesia,' he said.
'Then I understood they need a leader with a very strong character; they need a leader who has a moral character for Indonesia's future.'
Five years into Indonesia's rocky transformation from a dictatorship to democracy, the retired general might appear to be an unlikely candidate. But Wiranto, the leading presidential candidate for the powerful Golkar party, is trying to re-fashion himself as a strong leader in an attempt to oust President Megawati Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle.
He says as president he would promote law and order 'without being trapped by authoritarianism and militarism'.