Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono

PRESIDENT OF INDONESIA

WRITTEN BY: Greg Fealy

See Article History

Alternative Title: SBY

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, byname SBY, (born September 9, 1949, Pacitan, East Java, Indonesia),
Indonesian military officer, politician, and government official who was the first popularly elected
president of Indonesia (2004–14).

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono

QUICK FACTS

Indonesian Pres. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

BORN

September 9, 1949 (age 70)

Pacitan, Indonesia

TITLE / OFFICE

President, Indonesia (2004-2014)

POLITICAL AFFILIATION

Democratic Party

Yudhoyono was born into a well-to-do family of aristocratic background. Following in the footsteps of
his father, a middle-ranking officer, he entered the army after graduating from the Indonesian Military
Academy in 1973. His quick rise through the ranks was assisted by his marriage to Kristiani Herawati, the
daughter of a powerful general. As an officer, Yudhoyono acquired valuable experience abroad,
undertaking the United States Army’s Infantry Officer Advanced Course in the early 1980s and training
at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in 1991. He also earned a master’s degree in
business administration from Webster University near St. Louis, Missouri, in 1991. Yudhoyono
eventually earned a Ph.D. in economics from the Bogor Agricultural University in Indonesia in 2004.

In 1995 Yudhoyono served as Indonesia’s chief military observer on the UN peacekeeping force in Bosnia
and Herzegovina. Later he was chief of the army’s social and political affairs staff. Yudhoyono left active
military service in 2000 with the rank of lieutenant general. From 2000 to 2004 he held high-profile
cabinet posts in the governments of both Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati Sukarnoputri. In 2002 he
became the principal founder of the Democrat Party (Partai Demokrat; PD), which became his political
vehicle for the rest of his career in public service.

In 2004, after the PD had contested parliamentary elections in March and won 7.5 percent of the vote,
Yudhoyono was able to challenge Megawati for the presidency. He received the largest number of votes
in the first round of balloting in July, and in a September runoff election Yudhoyono won a landslide
victory over Megawati, garnering 61 percent of the vote. He was sworn in as president on October 20.

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Yudhoyono, who was widely seen as possessing the personal traits and professional skills necessary to
restore prosperity and stability to the country, entered office with an ambitious reform agenda. He
promised to accelerate economic growth, crack down on corruption and terrorism, and strengthen
democracy and human rights. Yudhoyono’s government faced an early challenge in December 2004
when a tsunami struck Indonesia; the greatest natural disaster to befall Indonesia in more than a
century, it was believed to have killed some 132,000 people. Despite that tragedy, Yudhoyono was able
to bring significant improvement to the country’s economy, and his anticorruption campaign drew
praise as some 300 national and regional political leaders and officials were tried and found guilty of
corruption. Presidential elections were held again in July 2009, and Yudhoyono won a second term in
office, this time defeating opponent Megawati in the first round with the same 61 percent of the vote as
in 2004.

Yudhoyono’s government had to face more national calamities early in his second term, including
powerful earthquakes in 2009 and another major tsunami and the eruption of Mount Merapi in 2010—
each of which killed hundreds of people. Indonesia nonetheless was generally prosperous and peaceful
for most of the term, though by 2013 economic growth had slowed and inflation was rising. His
administration and the PD were dogged by corruption scandals, however, and the party did badly in the
2014 legislative elections. Yudhoyono was unable to run again for president, because of term limits, and
he left office in October 2014, succeeded by Joko Widodo (Jokowi