Aburizal Bakrie

Aburizal Bakrie (born 15 November 1946) is an Indonesian politician and a widely recognised successful businessman in Indonesia via his conglomerate Bakrie Group.

Bakrie was born on 15 November 1946 in Jakarta.

His father is Achmad Bakrie, the founder of Bakrie & Brothers and Bakrie Group.

His mother is Roosniah Nasution.

Bakrie is the eldest of four, he has two brothers, Nirwan Bakrie and Indra Usmansyah Bakrie, and a sister Roosniah Odi Bakrie.

In 1972 Bakrie joined PT Bakrie & Brothers Tbk known today as the Bakrie Group, the conglomerate founded by his late father, which prospered much like the rest of the Indonesian economy during the Soeharto presidency.

The Bakrie Group conducts business in agriculture, real estate, trade, shipping, banking, insurance, media, manufacturing, construction, and mining.

Bakrie attended the Bandung Institute of Technology where he obtained a degree in electrical engineering in 1973.

From 1991 to 1995 Bakrie served two consecutive terms as the President of the ASEAN Business Forum and two consecutive terms from 1994 to 2004 as the President of the KADIN.

In 1998 the Asian economic crisis challenged Bakrie's control of the conglomerate, from which he emerged victorious after a successful refinancing process in 2000.

Aburizal Bakrie, the eldest of four siblings was the chairman of the family enterprise from 1999 to 2004.

From 2004 until 2005 Bakrie served as Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for Economy.

As a member of the Golkar party Bakrie was running to become Golkar's candidate for the presidency in 2004.

In 2004 Bakrie retired from PT Bakrie & Brothers Tbk before being named Coordinating Minister for Economy.

The appointment by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was initially viewed with some reservation.

Shortly after being named to the cabinet of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Bakrie set in motion a new government policy calling for a 3% reduction of Indonesians living in poverty, by reducing fuel subsidies in exchange for financial support to approximately 6 million people.

Bakrie argued the government's need to gradually increase fuel prices to keep fuel subsidies from busting its budget, while bringing the cost of fuel closer to international levels.

From 2005 until 2009 he served as Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare.

By October 2005 and after two price hikes, the cost of fuel increased by 126%.

Standard & Poor's rated the hike as an encouraging move to relieve immediate pressure on the country's fiscal position and external balance.

In a move to stem Indonesia's declining output of crude oil, Bakrie weighed in to end a standoff between ExxonMobil Corporation and PT Pertamina.

The companies had been at odds for many years, following their dispute over operational and profit sharing issues in the Cepu Block oil fields project, the OPEC member's biggest oil discovery on Java in decades.

The previous year Bakrie pledged that the new government wanted to resolve the Cepu and other disputes involving international companies, in a show of its commitment to improving Indonesia's investment climate.

After a reshuffling of the cabinet in 2005, Bakrie was appointed Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare.

Bakrie's name has been mentioned in reference with the Sidoarjo mud flow that erupted on 29 May 2006 in Sidoarjo, a regency of East Java, causing significant devastation to the environment and loss of life.

Scientists are divided over the cause that triggered the mud flow.

One side is claiming it was a natural occurrence caused by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake that occurred two days earlier near Yogyakarta, while the other side and government confirmed the drilling practices of the PT Lapindo Brantas, a company in which Bakrie's family was a controlling shareholder, triggered the mudflow.

The media coverage as a result remains mixed.

Although environmental groups urged Indonesia's government to revoke the drilling license of PT Lapindo Brantas for environmental mismanagement, a three-year police investigation into the incident ended with the case being dropped.

According to the Jakarta Globe, Satya Widya Yudha, a legislator from Golkar, and Effendi Simbolon from the PDI-P and deputy chairman of House of Representatives Commission VII, which oversees mines and energy affairs, largely sided with Bakrie's family in calling it a natural disaster and showed satisfaction with their compensation process, while denouncing "politicisation" of the issue.

In the contrary, Eva Kusuma Sundari, then a legislator from PDI-P whose property was affected by the disaster, accused Lapindo and the government of failing to fulfill their obligations in compensating the victims, calling them "insensitive and unresponsive".

In May 2008 Bakrie announced the handout of $1.52 billion to nearly 19 million low income households as part of a direct cash relief program aimed to cushion the blow of the fuel increase.

Since 2009, Bakrie served as the Chairman of the Golkar Party up to late 2014, and resumed chairmanship in May 2015.

He is well known to be responsible of the Sidoarjo mud flow via his company Energi Mega Persada.

In 2009 Bakrie was elected as the Chairman of Golkar party at Golkar Party Congress in Pekanbaru, Riau, Indonesia after defeating Surya Paloh, Yuddy Chrisnandi and Hutomo Mandala Putra.

In May 2010, he successfully formed and was elected the leader of a majority parliamentary coalition with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's party.

In the fall of 2010 media coverage started to indicate that Bakrie was seeking to become the Golkar Party's presidential candidate in Indonesia's 2014 Presidential election.

Since then, Bakrie repeatedly expressed his desire to be nominated as Golkar's presidential candidate.

A 2013 report indicated that for nearly seven years the mudflow had been wreaking havoc in the livelihoods of Porong residents in particular and on the Sidoarjo economy as a whole.

The mudflow had also buried more than 6000 hectares of land, displacing 39,700 people and submerging three subdistricts, 12 villages, 11,241 buildings and 362 hectares of rice fields.