Markus Junianto Sihaloho – Recent maneuvers by the Golkar Party to court smaller organizations connected to the United Development Party are nothing to worry about, the Islamic-based party's deputy chairman said on Wednesday.

Chozin Chumaidy said the United Development Party, also known as the PPP, had noted Golkar's approaches to two of its founding organizations, the Indonesian Muslim Brotherhood (Parmusi) and Syarikat Islam, but was not overly concerned.

Parmusi and SI are fairly independent of the PPP and are entitled to align themselves with whichever party their leadership saw fit, he said.

"Golkar's moves don't trouble us," he said. "We can live with the consequences. Having said that, though, we hope Parmusi and the SI keep in mind their historic links to the PPP."

Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) political researcher Burhanuddin Muhtadi has said parties were looking to co-opt social organizations as a way to broaden their voter base to counter a possible doubling of the legislative threshold in the 2014 general elections.

Smaller parties were looking to band together as in confederations or coalesce into larger parties, he said.

Chozin said the PPP was not considering any such consolidation because it was confident of meeting the threshold. Instead, the party will focus on improving its organizational performance, implementing programs and improving the quality of members, he said.

Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) senior official Adang Ruchiatna also said his party was not seeking to consolidate smaller groups, pointing out it would be meaningless for the country's third-largest party.

"Alliances like that are based on pragmatism, not ideology, so they will amount to no more than negotiations and compromise," Adang said. "We see it happening all around, and we don't want any part of it."

He added that the PDI-P had called on its members to be role models for their constituents. "It's not easy to manage our current members, so imagine how complicated it would be with outsiders in the mix," Adang said.

However, the National Awakening Party (PKB) said it was in talks with the Reform Star Party (PBR), and was also attempting to reconcile with a splinter group that did not recognize the current PKB leadership.