Markus Junianto Sihaloho – Former President Megawati Sukarnoputri remains the hot favorite to run on the main opposition party's ticket in the 2014 presidential election, but others also stand a chance, party officials said on Thursday.

Maruarar Sirait, a member of the central leadership board of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said a survey of voters aged 17 to 31 carried out by the party earlier this year showed that Megawati, the PDI-P chairwoman, would be the frontrunner if a presidential election were held this year.

Coming in second was Prabowo Subianto, founder of the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) and Megawati's running mate in the 2009 election, Maruarar said, although he gave no figures.

However, he said Megawati would never insist on being given the party's nomination. "The chairwoman is always like that, she prefers to give a chance to other people," he said.

He added that while the party had not officially discussed who it would nominate in 2014, it was widely recognized that the candidate would have to meet two stringent criteria.

The first, Maruarar said, was high electability as reflected in opinion polls, while the second was the ability to consolidate the party. He added that Megawati met both criteria.

On Wednesday, however, Megawati said the party would likely seek a new presidential candidate for 2014, after nominating her in 2004 and 2009. She lost both elections to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, her former legal, political and security affairs minister.

She said that at the PDI-P's last national caucus in 2010, no decision was reached to automatically nominate the party head as its presidential candidate.

She said this differed from the caucuses that came prior to the 2004 and 2009 elections, when the party agreed that its chairperson should also be its presidential candidate. "So in the 2014 election, there will be room for new candidates," Megawati said.

Maruarar said that rather than obsess over the presidential race that was still three years off, it would be better for the party to focus on how it could reach out to more grassroots voters.

Separately, a recently concluded meeting of the PDI-P's central leadership board in Manado, North Sulawesi, recommended that the country revert back to its old system for determining which candidates received legislative seats in national elections.

Under the current system, the candidate with the most votes in a constituency gets a legislative seat. Under the old system, the parties got all the votes and distributed them to their candidates based on seniority, no matter how many votes each individual may have won. Andreas Hugo Pareira, from the central leadership board, said it was necessary to correct the "current liberalization of our political system."

"Through the party ranking system, each party would be forced to put forward its best candidates for the election," he said.