Anita Rachman – While continuing to deny that they had political ambitions, officials of the National Democrats on Friday vowed that every single province in Indonesia would have an official representative by the end of the month.

"By January 28, we shall complete the setting up of branches on the provincial level," said Ferry Mursyidan Baldan, the membership chief of the mass social organization launched nearly a year ago by media magnate Surya Paloh.

But he stressed that the National Democrats would remain a social organization and dismissed speculations that this was yet another signal of the rapidly growing group's ambition to turn itself into a political vehicle for Surya to run in the 2014 presidential election.

"If we'd really wanted to turn ourselves into a political party, that would have been easy. But from the start, we have said we wanted to remain a [social] organization," Ferry said.

He acknowledged, though, that several members of the National Democrats had aired wishes to transform it into a political party.

In February last year – after suffering a crushing defeat in the battle to chair the Golkar Party – Surya threw a massive party at Jakarta's Istora Senayan to announce the launch of the National Democrats in front of a crowd of 12,000 people. There, Surya insisted he was committed to not transforming the new organization into a political party.

Ferry explained that the provincial representatives would be in addition to those already leading more than 100 branches across the country.

He said the National Democrats were currently represented in 103 districts and municipalities and 25 provinces. As of next week, the movement would see the opening of branches in more provinces, including West Nusa Tenggara, Central Java, Bali and Central Sulawesi, Ferry said.

The organization's moves come shortly after the revision of the Political Parties Law, which now states that parties must have representatives in each of the 33 provinces, in 75 percent of all districts and in half of all subdistricts, and permanent offices at each level. Parties previously only needed 50 members to be recognized.

The law, which has been criticized by analysts for its strict guidelines to prevent marginal parties from running, also states that parties wishing to contest the 2014 election have six months to prove they have 990 members.