By Ted Piccone and Bimo Yusman
Under SBY, Indonesia has boosted its international presence. What will his successor do?
After nearly ten years in office, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (widely known as SBY) will hand power this July to an elected successor in competitive multi-party elections. His efforts to consolidate Indonesia’s democracy and expand its economy have yielded tangible gains across a variety of measures, with much more room to improve. His mark on Indonesian foreign policy, while rooted in nonalignment and pragmatism, has been noteworthy for its willingness to address values of democracy and human rights head-on. What will this legacy mean for Indonesia’s potential as a leader for other societies, particularly from the Muslim world?
Indonesia’s first directly elected president, SBY came to power in 2004 with more than 60 percent of the vote; in 2009, he won re-election in the first round by a similarly wide margin. After a tumultuous transition following the 1998 downfall of the despot President Suharto, the relative success of these two elections, and the country’s acceptance of the results, propelled Indonesia’s rapid transformation into a flourishing democracy and economic dynamo with a rapidly expanding middle class. Now, with SBY unable to seek a third term due to constitutionally mandated term limits, the race is on to succeed him.
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