Medan – After humbling losses at the polls in 2009, the Golkar Party is aiming to attract at least 40 million votes and win the general legislative elections in 2014, party chairman Aburizal Bakrie said over the weekend.
After installing party board members in North Sumatra on Saturday, the controversial business magnate said Golkar would achieve the goal by returning to its tried and tested strategies of consolidation and lifting party membership down to the village level.
He said the party hoped to mobilize at least 100 members in each village, as well as 300 sympathizers.
"If the target of 100 cadres plus 300 sympathizers is achieved, we will have at least 40 million voters in the 2014 general elections and that will mean Golkar will again emerge as the winner," he said.
Thumped by the Democratic Party and pipped by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) in last year's polls, Golkar in October elected Bakrie head of the political vehicle of former President Suharto.
Bakrie, a far from popular politician linked to a number of scandals and business controversies, including the Lapindo mudflow disaster, acknowledged it would be difficult to achieve the goal because other parties would be also be competing for voters.
"It is not an easy job but nor is it impossible to achieve together. We will work hard to meet the target," he said.
Bakrie added that the party hoped to win at least 50 percent of the vote in the local elections in every province.
To reach the mark, he said the party would change the way it selected candidates for elections. Formerly, candidates were selected through a provincial-level party convention but in the future they will be chosen through survey-based selections.
He said that before Golkar would accept any candidates for the local elections, a survey of their electability would be conducted by an independent organization, with the results passed to the party's executive board.
"As of now, we will only nominate cadres who are supported not by some party elites as we have done in the past, but by the people based on survey results. So regional party leaders will not be automatically nominated as candidates for local leadership," he said.
The party's national executive board, led by himself, would establish a team to discuss the survey results.
"Who we are going to nominate will be discussed and determined by the team based upon the survey results. So we can ensure that only figures who are really supported by the people will be nominated," he said.
Bakrie advised all who wished to become local leaders to reach out to the people to win support, repeating that the nominations would depend heavily on the survey results.
"We will stick to our commitment of 'people's votes, Golkar's votes'. So only those really supported by the people will be nominated by the party as local leaders. Based on that, we believe the target of winning 50 percent at the local elections can be achieved," he said.