Febriamy Hutapea – The National Mandate Party continued its flip-flopping over the weekend as rifts again emerged over President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's decision to name Boediono as his running mate.
"If in the beginning we gave 100 percent support to the Democrats, now we are changing our minds," Dradjad Wibowo, a senior politician from the party, known as PAN, said on Sunday.
After weeks of opposition to forming a coalition with Yudhoyono's Democratic Party, PAN chairman Sutrisno Bachir signed a letter of support backing Yudhoyono's choice of Boediono on Saturday night.
Dradjad, an economist turned legislator who is close to PAN founder and party supervisory board chairman Amien Rais, said that PAN was again reconsidering its decision to support the Democrats, saying they wanted State Secretary Hatta Rajasa as the vice presidential candidate.
The party, however, had decided to support Yudhoyono during its national meeting and the decision could not be overturned until next year's meeting. Dradjad said Boediono was not the right person to develop the best social economic policy in line with the Constitution.
Dradjad is among a group within PAN that supports Golkar Party chairman Jusuf Kalla and People's Conscience Party (Hanura) chairman Wiranto, who registered their official candidacy for the nation's top jobs at the General Elections Commission (KPU) on Saturday morning.
Dradjad said Amien, who had initially steered his party toward supporting the Democrats and proposed Hatta to run with Yudhoyono, could not accept the president's decision to name Boediono as his running mate.
Meanwhile, the Golkar faction chairman in the House of Representatives, Priyo Budi Santoso, confirmed there had been intense communications between Golkar and PAN. "Kalla met Amien late on Friday," he said, although he refused to reveal what was actually discussed between them.
On the other side of the equation, Panda Nababan, a member of the campaign team for Megawati Sukarnoputri from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and Prabowo Subianto of the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), said that Prabowo and Sutrisno were also still involved in discussions.
Previously, Kalla had said that he was unphased by the support given to the Democrats from 23 political parties. Speaking before he registered his presidential candidacy at the KPU, Kalla told his supporters that it was just politicking and the parties' elites were only playing games.
He likened the 23 parties to buses, saying "There's no problem if the buses are parked in another place so long as the passengers are here."
PAN has been riddled by deep divisions since its poor showing in the legislative elections in April, where it secured only 6 percent of the popular vote. The majority of the party, including senior member and State Secretary Hatta Rajasa, have been actively supporting Yudhoyono, while Sutrisno's faction had wanted the party to back Prabowo.
Despite Sutrisno's letter of support for Yudhoyono, Dradjad said that the party's decision to support the president earlier this month had been made in haste and before he had actually chosen Boediono as his running mate. He said that this had opened up old wounds within the party, once again driving a wedge between supporters and detractors of Yudhoyono.
The rift was clear to see at the official declaration of the Yudhoyono-Boediono pairing in Bandung, West Java, on Friday, with PAN secretary general Zulkifli Hasan and senior legislator Patrialis Akbar the only party members attending the event.