P

resident Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono took time off from his duties on Wednesday morning for a medical checkup at the Gatot Soebroto Army Central Hospital (RSPAD) in Central Jakarta.

The visit was just four days after Yudhoyono met a team of doctors at the Cipanas Presidential Palace in West Java over the weekend.

With the company of First Lady Kristiani Herawati, who underwent a similar checkup, the President returned to the State Palace at midday to resume his daily duties, though his official schedule described his activities for the day as “internal”, which forbid press coverage.

Presidential spokesman, Julian Aldrin Pasha, said the checkup was routine and dismissed the concerns that the President was ill.

“It is just a routine, general check-up as advised by the President’s team of doctors. Pak President is now in good health,” Julian told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

He said the President’s checkup was scheduled several months previously.

“It is by chance that the checkup was today [on Wednesday], as the President had time,” he said.

Yudhoyono and First Lady Kristiani Herawati spent two days at the Cipanas Palace over the weekend for an internal meeting that was closed to journalists.

The President’s doctors met him at Cipanas on Saturday, hours after a suicide bombing at a mosque inside the Cirebon Police compound, West Java.

A source told the Post that the President was under pressure to find a way to release the 20 Indonesian sailors who have been held hostage by Somali pirates for the past month.

The relatives of the sailors staged a rally in front of the Presidential Palace and demanded that Yudho-yono have their loved ones released.

From Cipanas Palace, Yudhoyono took to his office at the Bogor Presidential Palace on Monday, where he and some 400 officials — the Vice President, ministers, governors, regional councilors and businesspeople — discussed economic and security issues.

“I stayed up late into the night, at 12:15 a.m., meeting and discussing security issues, which was parallel with the meeting on the economy and people’s welfare,” Yudhoyono said in his closing remarks at the Bogor meeting on Tuesday.

In March, 2009, Yudhoyono cut short a trip to South Sulawesi due to gastric pain and fatigue.

The President also felt ill while campaigning in that year’s elections.

The President’s illness then prevented him from inaugurating the construction of the Rp 900 billion (US$104.4 million) Center Point of Indonesia mega-project in Losari beach, South Sulawesi.

It also forced the President to cancel a trip to Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, to inaugurate infrastructure projects and a community empowerment program.