Armando Siahaan, Jakarta – We are not in competition with each other. That was the message Golkar Party chairman Aburizal Bakrie and media mogul Surya Paloh, who chairs the National Democrats, aimed to convey by Sunday's surprise public appearance at the home of former top Golkar leader Jusuf Kalla.

The bickering and demands two months ago of Golkar members, including party secretary general Idrus Marham, for members to shun the National Democrats seem to have ended up on the back burner.

It was one of the few occasions when both heavyweights have been seen together since Golkar's heated fight for the chairmanship last year that ended in strained relations between the two.

Surya lost to Aburizal and the relationship was further fractured when Surya set up the National Democrats as a social organization and then won the backing of a string of well-known political figures.

The organization is seen as Surya's future political vehicle. However, statements by the two men on Sunday have raised the possibility that reconciliation between the organizations could be possible.

"Why should there be any talk of reconciliation when we never had a problem with the National Democrats?" Idrus told the Jakarta Globe on Monday. He said his party had never seen the National Democrats as a political threat, as long as it remained a social organization.

Idrus also said Golkar had made no effort to recruit the National Democrats as a wing of the party. The statement was in stark contrast to recent remarks by Golkar leaders who had said they expected party members to quit the National Democrats.

On Sunday, Surya said his group had never considered Golkar an enemy. "We are of different streams but we have to struggle together for the country's welfare."

The media tycoon said he supported any effort to unite the two entities when it came to the national interest. But this did not mean the National Democrats would formally join Golkar.

He said his group was not affiliated with any political party and would not evolve into one anytime soon.

In May, he said that the group would only become a fully fledged political party if it had 10 million to 15 million members, whereas at the time it had just 30,000 on its books.

Surya said he would meet Aburizal again, without specifying when and where.

Yunarto Wijaya, a political analyst from Charta Politika, said: "Learning from the history of conflict that there has been between Aburizal and Surya, it would be difficult to reunite them. There have been too many traumas, and both have built their own power infrastructure."

Yunarto said both men had been trying to use Sunday's event to raise their profiles.

"Both were aware the event would received significant media exposure," he said. "The Golkar leaders were trying to attract the public's attention because most of the focus has been on SBY," he said, referring to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

By being photographed together, Kalla, Aburizal and Surya wanted people to think that Golkar had national-scale leaders, Yunarto said. However, he added that Aburizal and Surya had also wanted to show their individual power.

Aburizal seemed to want to show that the National Democrats were still part of Golkar because many of its members were from the party, and that Surya's group was too small to compete.

Meanwhile, Surya's presence among Golkar leaders suggested he was capable of building the National Democrats into a group to rival Golkar one day, Yunarto said.