Ridwan Max Sijabat and Slamet Susanto, Jakarta/Yogyakarta – The National Awakening Party (PKB) said it will remain cautious when considering alliances with other parties over the deliberation of four political bills after the Golkar Party and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) announced they had forged a coalition.
Golkar and the PDI-P have joined forces to deliberate the bills on political parties, general elections and presidential elections, as well as on the composition of the People's Consultative Assembly, the House of Representatives, the Regional Representatives Council and regional legislatures.
The House established Tuesday two special committees to deliberate the bills.
"The PKB will conduct a further study into whether it will join forces with the other seven factions to form an alliance in deliberating the four political bills. If the PKB joins, it must win support from all faction members after consulting with the party's national executive board," Effendi Choirie said Wednesday after being installed as new chairman of the PKB faction at the House.
Officials from the PKB met with representatives of seven other factions at the Mulia Hotel on Tuesday evening to seek out an alliance based on a common approach to deliberating the political bills.
The seven factions were from the United Development Party, National Mandate Party (PAN), Prosperous Justice Party, Democratic Party, Reform Star Party, Prosperous Peace Party and the Democracy Pioneer Star faction.
Last Wednesday, Golkar and the PDI-P, the two largest House factions, convened in Medan, North Sumatra, to seek a strategic alliance to safeguard the Pancasila state ideology and the Republic of Indonesia unitary-state concept.
Effendi declined to comment on whether the PKB would join the Golkar-PDI-P alliance.
Zulkifli Hassan, chairman of the PAN faction, which organized Tuesday's meeting, expressed optimism that the eight factions could form a strong alliance to push their common agenda in the deliberation of the political bills.
"We will be successful in promoting our concept in the bills because we comprise a majority of the House," he said, adding that the eight factions would hold a secondary meeting to decide whether to form the alliance. Meanwhile in Yogyakarta, the chairman of Golkar's Advisory Board, Surya Paloh, denied his party and the PDI-P had committed to a coalition and labeled the Medan meeting a "get-together".
"There has been a misinterpretation of both parties' meeting that a coalition had been forged. We have yet to forge a coalition," he said, adding that it is not inconceivable that both parties could ally with one another in deliberating the bills.
"There is nothing wrong with a coalition, but it has not yet happened. We only talked about small things, getting to know each other," he said. "We discussed problems such as how to reduce fuel prices to be more affordable. These are the priorities and we did not talk about the 2009 general election."
Commenting on the meeting of the eight factions, Surya said this was not unusual and within the parties' rights to convene. "It's their right to have a coalition of eight or 88 parties. I respect their rights," he said.