Bagus BT Saragih, Jakarta – With limited resources and time and stricter electoral rules, new political parties may find it difficult to obtain votes in the 2014 elections, analysts say.
One key challenge for new parties is the fact that many Indonesians perceive politics negatively, according to Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) political analyst Ikrar Nusa Bhakti.
"Most of the new parties were formed by politicians from existing parties, which makes things worse. It's like merely 'changing clothes'. New parties must address this matter very seriously."
At least four new political parties – the Nasdem Party, the National Republic Party (Nasrep), the National Union Party (PPN) and the Indonesia Nation Sovereignty Party (PKBI) – have registered with the Law and Human Rights Ministry to qualify to run in the 2014 general elections. Nasdem and Nasrep are filled with many former politicians from the Golkar Party.
The PKBI is a splinter group from the National Awakening Party (PKB), while the PPN was formed by 10 small parties that failed to meet electoral threshold requirements in the 2009 general elections.
Ikrar said of all the new parties, Nasdem was the one that was the most prepared to face the polls. The party is linked with the National Democrats, a mass organization founded by media mogul and former Golkar Party patron Surya Paloh.
The organization has used Surya's media outlets, Metro TV and Media Indonesia, to extensively promote its activities across the nation. Many Golkar politicians also fill the organization's elite positions.
Although Golkar chair Aburizal Bakrie played down Nasdem's existence, Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) political analyst Burhanuddin Muhtadi said that Nasdem might "steal Golkar's votes a little".
He said Nasdem would still find it difficult to compete with bigger parties like President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS).
"New parties need to show radical change in their strategies to lure voters. With old faces at the wheels and conservative ways in gaining votes, they will surely be facing difficult times," Ikrar said.
Siti Zuhro, another LIPI analyst, predicted that the new parties would hardly be able to gain more than one percent of the vote, calling them "decimal parties".
"Nasrep's establishment, for example, was not expected by anybody. I had never heard of it but all of a sudden it registered with the Law and Human Rights Ministry. It proves that the party never planned to develop political strongholds," she said.
Siti argued that the emergence of new parties would only make elections ineffective as they had little chance of gaining votes. She said that out of the 38 political parties that ran in 2009, 23 obtained less than 1 percent of the vote. "So what's the point of those small parties? It only made the ballot so big that voters found it difficult to unfold it."
Siti reiterated that a simple multi-party system would fit Indonesia's democracy the best. "It's cheaper and more efficient, and it suits the presidential system that we adopted."
Many think that the 2011 Political Parties Law made it more difficult for new parties to run in elections. The law stipulates that a party can run in elections if it has branch offices in all 33 provinces, 75 percent of the cities and regencies in each province and 50 percent of the districts.
The House of Representatives is now deliberating a revision to the legislative general election law that will likely increase the legislative threshold to 3 percent from the 2.5 percent used in the 2009 polls.
Center for Electoral Reform political analyst Hadar Nafiz Gumay said he agreed with a simpler multi-party system, but he disapproved of stricter electoral rules, saying they could violate citizens' political rights.