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).
Yudhoyono was born right into a well-to-do household of aristocratic background. Following within the footsteps of his father, a middle-ranking officer, he entered the military after graduating from the Indonesian Military Academy in 1973. His fast rise by the ranks was assisted by his marriage to Kristiani Herawati, the daughter of a strong common. As an officer, Yudhoyono acquired priceless expertise overseas, endeavor the United States Army’s Infantry Officer Advanced Course within the early Nineteen Eighties and coaching on the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in 1991. He additionally earned a grasp’s diploma in enterprise administration from Webster University close to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1991. Yudhoyono finally earned a Ph.D. in economics from the Bogor Agricultural University in Indonesia in 2004.
In 1995 Yudhoyono served as Indonesia’s chief navy observer on the UN peacekeeping power in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Later he was chief of the military’s social and political affairs employees. Yudhoyono left lively navy service in 2000 with the rank of lieutenant common. From 2000 to 2004 he held high-profile cupboard posts within the governments of each Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati Sukarnoputri. In 2002 he grew to become the principal founding father of the Democrat Party (Partai Demokrat; PD), which grew to become his political automobile for the remainder of his profession in public service.
In 2004, after the PD had contested parliamentary elections in March and gained 7.5 p.c of the vote, Yudhoyono was in a position to problem Megawati for the presidency. He acquired the biggest variety of votes within the first spherical of balloting in July, and in a September runoff election Yudhoyono gained a landslide victory over Megawati, garnering 61 p.c of the vote. He was sworn in as president on October 20.
Yudhoyono, who was broadly seen as possessing the non-public traits {and professional} expertise mandatory to revive prosperity and stability to the nation, entered workplace with an bold reform agenda. He promised to speed up financial development, crack down on corruption and terrorism, and strengthen democracy and human rights. Yudhoyono’s authorities confronted an early problem in December 2004 when a tsunami struck Indonesia; the best pure catastrophe to befall Indonesia in additional than a century, it was believed to have killed some 132,000 folks. Despite that tragedy, Yudhoyono was in a position to deliver important enchancment to the nation’s financial system, and his anticorruption marketing campaign drew reward as some 300 nationwide and regional political leaders and officers have been tried and located responsible of corruption. Presidential elections have been held once more in July 2009, and Yudhoyono gained a second time period in workplace, this time defeating opponent Megawati within the first spherical with the identical 61 p.c of the vote as in 2004.
Yudhoyono’s authorities needed to face extra nationwide calamities early in his second time period, together with highly effective earthquakes in 2009 and one other main tsunami and the eruption of Mount Merapi in 2010—every of which killed a whole bunch of individuals. Indonesia nonetheless was typically affluent and peaceable for many of the time period, although by 2013 financial development had slowed and inflation was rising. His administration and the PD have been dogged by corruption scandals, nonetheless, and the get together did badly within the 2014 legislative elections. Yudhoyono was unable to run once more for president, due to time period limits, and he left workplace in October 2014, succeeded by Joko Widodo (Jokowi).