Jakarta – The National Mandate Party (PAN) and the Golkar Party are encouraging smaller parties to join with them so that they can lobby the senate to increase the electoral threshold for the 2014 elections.
Burhanuddin Muhtadi, a researcher from the Indonesian Survey Institute, said Sunday two ideas had been proposed by the two parties to increase the electoral threshold from the current 2.5 percent to 5 percent for the 2014 elections.
The PAN proposed a confederation of political parties, while Golkar argued for "acquisitions" of small political parties.
"The confederation of political parties would allow several political parties to merge while maintaining their respective identities," he told The Jakarta Post.
He cited the National Front in Malaysia as an example of a successful political confederation. He said the confederation would benefit the PAN and other political parties under its flag.
He said that, as the leader, the PAN could drive the confederation's movements while other smaller parties could maintain seats at the House of Representatives.
Burhanuddin criticized the PAN for not proposing a clear format for how such a confederation would work, which he said had provoked negative responses from its rivals. "As of today, technical details on how the confederation would be run remain unclear," he said.
PAN deputy chief Bima Arya said his party had internally discussed details of how the confederation would be run and would make the results public within a week. "We want the confederation of political parties to be a hot public debate," he told the Post.
He mentioned two ways the confederation could work. The first, he said, would allow confederation members to maintain their party names.
The second, he continued, was a partial confederation, where political parties would compete in the election under their own names, but then merge into a confederation after their votes were counted to ensure they met the electoral threshold.
Golkar leaders have met recently with leaders of small political parties that did not win seats at the House in the 2009 general elections, a move many have seen as an attempt to "annex" them.
Chairman of the Reform Star Party (PBR) Bursah Zarnubi met with Golkar chairman and businessman Aburizal Bakrie on June 1 at Golkar's headquarters in Jakarta. Bursah said the meeting discussed the possibility of his party merging with Golkar.
Previously, Bachtiar Chamsyah, the chairman of United Indonesian Muslims, an organization under the United Development Party (PPP), met with Aburizal in Jakarta. Bachtiar did not comment on the focus of the meeting.
Aburizal said Golkar had never asked other organizations to join it, but added that he would not discourage any organization from joining. "They came to us and requested to merge their organizations with Golkar," he said when addressing a Golkar meeting here on Sunday.
Burhanuddin said Golkar said it was expecting its "spin-offs", like the People's Conscience Party (Hanura) and the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), to take votes away from Golkar that it might otherwise win, as happened in the 2009 elections.
"Moreover, the National Democrat [a mass organization led by Golkar senior politician and media mogul Surya Paloh] has the potential to become a political party," he said. (rdf)