Jakarta – Like the classic Bible story about "The prodigal son", incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is very likely to embrace the Golkar Party back into his coalition, should the party decide to make up and renew its allegiance with his Democratic Party (PD).
"SBY is the kind of man who holds no grudges at all. He is willing to accept Golkar back into his political circle and give some ministerial posts to a number of Golkar executives," PD deputy chairman, Achmad Mubarok, told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
Achmad was referring to Yudhoyono by using his well-known acronym SBY.
The political marriage between Golkar and PD ended when Golkar chairman Jusuf Kalla, also the incumbent Vice President, declared his presidential candidacy and decided to compete head on with SBY.
The idea of renewing the coalition between the two parties emerged as soon as unofficial quick count results showed Kalla could probably come out short during the July 8 presidential election.
Quick count results indicate that Kalla secured only around 12 percent of the votes, while Yudhoyono seemed to win with around 60 percent of votes.
Achmad said the PD already knew Golkar would crawl back to Yudhoyono long before the quick count results came up.
"First, Golkar has never traditionally been part of the opposition. Second, our internal survey prior to the election showed that around 40 percent of Golkar members would not vote for Jusuf Kalla," he said.
"So, we already knew that we would win and that Golkar would most likely come back to us."
Kalla's campaign team head Fahmi Idris also said recently that as a party that had spent most of its time in the governmental structure, Golkar found it challenging and a little "awkward" to switch to the opposition.
However, Golkar's planned return might face a lot of resistance from the PD's original coalition partners, such as the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS).
The PKS was the first party to pledge its allegiance to the PD to win the election. Three other Islamists parties: the National Mandate Party (PAN), the National Awakening Party (PKB) and the United Development Party (PPP) then soon followed suit.
"Ethically speaking, Golkar as the losing challenger must be willing to become the opposition, which will allow a proper system of checks and balances in the legislative body," PKS President Tifatul Sembiring told the Post via a text message.
"Golkar must take responsibility for its actions. It should not continuously ride on other parties' hard work and efforts."
An executive from PAN, Patrialis Akbar, said he doubted Golkar would be willing to sacrifice its pride by asking for ministerial posts in the future Cabinet. However, Achmad said the established coalition for the presidential election did not have any impact on Yudhoyono's future decision to re-embrace Golkar.
The PD executive who chairs the party's political education and development team, Ruhut Sitompul, said coalition partners needed to calm down about the Cabinet seat distribution. (hdt)