Febriamy Hutapea – A senior official with the Democratic Party tried to quell a tempest of controversy on Friday, saying there had been no hidden agenda surrounding a recent meeting with a major rival party.

Ahmad Mubarok, the deputy chairman of the Democratic Party, previously said the party's recent overtures to the PDI-P were merely a ploy to put pressure on the members of the Democrats' coalition, to appease clamoring for positions in the next cabinet.

"On behalf of the Democrats, I apologize if the statement has insulted other parties. But I know clearly that the intention of our meeting is purely aimed at building communication," Syarif Hasan, who chairs the Democrats' faction in the House of Representatives, said in a discussion.

Syarif said that after facing off in heated competition during the legislative and presidential elections, Democrats needed to re-establish communication with other parties, including the PDI-P.

"We want to get our perceptions in line, at least to minimize our differences," he said. He declined to give details about negotiations that had been reached with the PDI-P.

"We didn't discuss 'who gets what.' We will let the president, who has the prerogative to choose his aides, decide," he said.

It's not the first time Mubarok has caused political hackles. Earlier this year, he was blamed for driving a wedge between the Democrats and the Golkar Party after he predicted that rivals in the presidential race would not gain many votes in this year's polls.

The deputy secretary general for the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), Zulkiflimansyah, said there had been an agreement stipulating that any formal negotiations would only be conducted directly by Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono through the PKS advisory board chairman, Hilmi Aminuddin.

He denied that the PKS had pressured Yudhoyono to allocate more seats in the cabinet to the party. "Hilmi just returned to Jakarta after conducting a minor [hajj] pilgrimage, so it's not true that we have made such demands," he said.

"We will not demand particular seats in the cabinet or rule that other parties can't join the coalition. We will let Yudhoyono make a decision freely as long as it would benefit the nation," he said.

Zulkifli said he did not want to give the impression that the PKS was worried it would lose cabinet positions if the PDI-P or Golkar joined the coalition.

"We are ready to prepare our best cadres. Let's meet and share ideas about the next cabinet. We will be ready to accept any amount that would be allotted to the PKS," he said.