JAKARTA – One of Indonesia’s senior-most politicians, black-bearded National Democrat Celebration (Nasdem) chairman Surya Paloh appears to see himself as an improbable kingmaker as events begin jostling to get position ahead of the Valentine’s Day 2024 presidential and legislative elections.
The clever 71-year-old Aceh-born press magnate was one of the primary to endorse Chief executive Joko Widodo whenever he ran for that presidency in 2014; in elections 5 years later his party gained significantly more seats in the 575-seat House of Associates.
This time, he has announced Nasdem’s choice for three presidential applicants – poll-topping Main Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, Jakarta Chief excutive Anies Baswedan plus current armed forces commander Andika Perkasa.
“All 3 are equal inside my eyes, ” he said at Nasdem’s national working meeting last June, faltering to explain his choice of Perkasa, who retires in November with no obvious pathway towards the civilian leadership. “At the right time, I will choose one of the three. ”
Defense Minister and Excellent Indonesia Movement (Gerindra) patron Prabowo Subianto, who is vying with Pranowo at the top of the polls, was a significant exclusion. Paloh suggested the 70-year-old retired general had been too old to contest a third bet for the presidency.
Republika columnist Ilham Bintang points out that Paloh is different from his contemporaries because he has never been tempted to use the party to fulfill a lust with regard to power. Instead, he likens him to a film producer arranging “an exclusive agreement with a top artist. ”
“Paloh has set themselves up as someone who may dictate the early goes, ” one analyst says of a man who founded Nasdem in 2011 after finishing a 40-year organization with the once all-powerful Golkar Party. “He ticks more those who win and always stays to the selection he has made. ”
While that hardly qualifies him as being a kingmaker, Paloh’s physically demanding efforts to form forces with Golkar and Gerindra, the second and third ranked events, demonstrate once again how democracy Indonesia-style provides evolved.
“It’s all a bit unseemly, but there is a certain pragmatism into it as well, ” says the analyst. “While they are all fanciful and dewy-eyed in the West as to what a democracy needs to be, in Indonesia it is in many ways a reflection of society alone.
“There are usually various dynamics within play, but you have to argue there is true competition among the events, ” he asserts. “What is significantly disturbing, however , may be the inability of the electorate to influence activities in government once it is in energy. ”
Indonesia’s preference for alleged rainbow coalitions has been strikingly illustrated in August last year whenever Widodo invited the particular National Mandate Party (PAN) into their second-term administration.
Political sources say the only obvious reason to bring the celebration in from the cold was to secure the support for techniques at the time to extend the president’s term above 2024, an issue that will continues to be pushed by Widodo’s faithful.
It was just 10 months later that party leader Zulkifli Hasan was designated trade minister within the place of incumbent Muhammad Lutfi, an independent technocrat sacked for his alleged mishandling from the palm oil crisis.
The new minister promptly found themself in hot water to get distributing free cooking food oil among constituents to help his son campaign for a DPR seat in the southern Sumatran province associated with Lampung.
With all the opposition solely represented by the Islamic-leaning Justice and Prosperity Celebration (PKS) – plus likely to stay so given the current separate – all 8 other parties are intent on protecting a place in the next ruling coalition and, crudely put, sharing in the spoils of condition.
Still, it’s hard to understand Golkar’s early move last May to participate forces with PAN and the Indonesian Development Party (PP), both of which are lingering below the 4%-of-the-vote threshold in the forms that would deny all of them representation in the DPR.
Like an equine without a jockey, the so-called United Philippines Coalition (KIB) is usually seeking to establish importance as a bloc currently boasting 25% of House seats. Remarked PPP deputy chairman Arsul Sani: “If the KIB has to offer its very humble platform to an outsider, then we will consider nominating one. ”
Fifth-ranked Nasdem controls 59 seats, 23 more than it won in its initial legislative election within 2014 when it has been criticized by the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission just for using Paloh’s City TV news system for excessive protection of the party.
The only real party staying indifferent from all the early pre-election jostling is usually ex-president Megawati Sukarnoputri’s ruling Indonesian Democratic Party for Battle (PDI-P) – plus that’s because it offers enough seats (128)to nominate a leader on its own.
Based on a Kompas survey taken last June, it also leads the polls with twenty two. 6%, comfortably ahead of Gerindra (12. 5%), the Democrat Celebration (11. 6%) and Golkar (10. 3%), followed by the National Awakening Party (PKB) and PKS, each with 5. 4%, and Nasdem at 4. 1%.
Unless Indonesia’s political system is turned on its head in the coming six months, it will probably be left to Megawati – and Megawati alone – to determine who could eventually become the most favored candidate in Indonesia’s fifth direct presidential election.
This wounderful woman has a simple but hard choice between Pranowo or her girl, DPR Speaker Puan Maharani, to carry the particular party’s banner. Every survey shows that is a choice among a winner and a loss by a yawning perimeter.
Megawati insists she won’t end up being swayed by general public opinion – until she is confronted with politics reality, as in 2014 when she had been forced to set aside her very own ambitions and pick Widodo as the obvious presidential applicant.
In latest days, one older party member has been quietly telling friends he believes Pranowo is “unstoppable, ” noting that Megawati is starting to change her mind over the popular figure whom remains as loyal to her as he has always been.
It makes simply no sense she would accept Puan as an operating mate to a candidate from another celebration, such as Prabowo, who will be expected to declare their third bid for that presidency at Gerindra’s annual congress this particular weekend.
That could explain why Prabowo is already hedging their bets by protecting an early alliance along with Muhaimin Iskander’s fourth-ranked PKB, nominally the political arm of the powerful mass Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama.
Safe to say it is a largely meaningless marriage. The ambitious Iskander may be able to deliver leading elements of PKB yet he can’t ensure the support of the NU, which demonstrated crucial in Widodo’s 2019 election success.
Headed by an executive authorities loyal to the moderate line taken by the late president Abdurrahman Wahid, the mass Muslim organization offers about 35 mil card-carrying members but can deliver far more votes than that at election time.
Analysts think 2024 could turn into a three-horse race, with two nationalist applicants, Prabowo and Pranowo, and the 53-year-old Baswedan heading a right-wing, Islamic ticket about what would be the first of 2 rounds of voting. That hasn’t happened since 2009.
Puan may well be satisfied with becoming PDI-P chief when the 75-year-old Megawati finally retires through politics, possibly as early as 2024. But even there she is apparently in a struggle with the girl reclusive half-brother, Prananda Prabowo, 52.
In a report last year, Detiknews warned the rivalry between the 2 could disturb PDI-P solidarity. A similar rift is also threatened with the Puan-Pranowo face-off, even though party members are usually unlikely to openly challenge Megawati’s specialist on that concern.
A three-term legislator and former human development minister, Puan is the only girl of businessman-politician Taufiq Kiemas, Megawati’s third husband, who was loudspeaker of the People’s Consultative Assembly from 2009 until his loss of life in 2013.
A rock musician in his leisure time, Prananda is Megawati’s second son from her first husband, Lieutenant Surindro Supjarso, who was killed at the age of 26 in the Skyvan transport plane crash in waters off northern Papua in January 1970, shortly after Megawati’s father and national independence hero Sukarno’s death.
The particular couple had been wedded only two years, living for most of that time at Madiun airbase in East Java, where only at this point they are naming the building after the long-dead pilot, often referred to as the love of Megawati’s life.
Prananda first appeared for the political stage whenever he attended the opening of the year 2010 PDI-P congress in Bali. He has been later included in the party’s management team with regard to 2015-2020 as mind of the party’s creative economy sector. He could be also said to create many of Megawati’s speeches.
Despite choosing to stay in the background, people who know him say he has more grit than their half-sister, who has few close associates and, according to critics, lacks the charisma needed to elevate her electability beyond single digits.
That alone would explain Puan’s fixation along with securing the leadership of PDI-P, which may theoretically give the girl the same power Megawati continues to enjoy 18 years after screwing up to win re-election in the country’s first-ever direct presidential competition.