Sukarno

Sukarno (born Koesno Sosrodihardjo, 6 June 1901, died 21 June 1970) was an Indonesian statesman, activist and revolutionary who served as the first president of Indonesia from 1945 to 1967. He was born in Surabaya in the Dutch East Indies to a Javanese schoolteacher father and a Balinese mother, and became a prominent leader of the nationalist movement against Dutch colonial rule, spending over a decade in Dutch detention until Japanese forces released him during the Second World War. With Mohammad Hatta he declared Indonesian independence on 17 August 1945 and was appointed president. In 1959 he introduced an authoritarian system known as Guided Democracy, and he made Indonesia a leading voice in the Non-Aligned Movement.