Hundreds of protesters hurled stones and sticks at police who responded with tear gas Wednesday on the first anniversary of the swearing in of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Chaotic skirmishes broke out between riot police and about 2,000 mainly student protesters outside the presidential palace in Jakarta, where the air filled with acrid gas. Similar clashes erupted elsewhere in Jakarta and other towns on the main island of Java, as well as the South Sulawesi capital of Makassar where about 1,000 protesters set fire to cars and briefly detained a police officer. In the wealthy Menteng neighbourhood of Jakarta, students blocked roads with barricades of wood and burning tyres, and fought police who tried to remove them. Police responded with tear gas and rifle fire into the air. Three people were taken into custody and one man was shot in the leg, protesters said. 'They were pushing us away for several minutes when suddenly they opened fire. I heard 10 gunshots, the first into the air and the rest at us,' said 24-year-old student Adi. 'One student was shot in his right leg and was taken to hospital.' One of the demonstrators shouted 'this is the source of the mess in this country' as they set a poster of Yudhoyono alight. 'We had to fire tear gas to disperse the protesters as they set fire to the president's poster,' Jakarta police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar said. 'We'll take firmer action against them if they start to burn cars or buildings.' Thousands of protesters took part in other rallies in Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, Palu and Bogor, where students also reportedly clashed with police. Almost 20,000 police were on standby in the capital to deal with any unrest, the Antara state news agency reported. 'He has failed to eradicate corruption,' said one protester, Rudi Daman, outside the palace. Another, Yati Andriyani of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence, said Yudhoyono had not honoured election pledges to protect human rights in the mainly Muslim country of 240 million people. 'They were only empty promises,' she said. It was the second day of violent unrest in Makassar, where demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails at police on Tuesday as Yudhoyono visited the town. The president, a centrist ex-general, warned protesters to express dissent within the limits of the law and not to try to overthrow his fractious governing coalition of nationalist secular and Islamic parties. 'The democracy we all want is not one leading to a sea of slander and anarchy, which can damage the things that we have built,' Yudhoyono told Elshinta radio. 'As a country, the world will see whether a nation's democracy is ethical and civilised or not.' Presidential spokesman Julian Aldrin Pasha said the protesters were 'not representative of the view of Indonesians'. 'If there are efforts to topple the government before its term is up, that is an unconstitutional act,' he added. The president's popularity rankings have slumped despite strong economic growth, amid rampant corruption and incompetence across all levels of state. He was sworn in at the start of his second five-year term on October 20 last year, having won two mandates to get tough on graft and improve governance. But many analysts say he has proven to be too weak and indecisive to take on powerful vested interests, which have been likened to the 'oligarchy' of elites that ran the country under late military strongman Suharto from 1967 to 1998. 