Anita Rachman – Pick a side and stick with it, the Golkar Party has demanded of its members with one foot in the camp of the newly declared NasDem Party.

Idrus Marham, the Golkar secretary general, said on Sunday that the party was serious about the ultimatum and would not extend the Aug. 11 deadline it had previously imposed for members to make up their minds.

However, he denied that the call signalled growing concerns in the Golkar ranks about the threat that NasDem – which registered as a party earlier this year but was only formally declared last Tuesday – posed to the grand old party of Indonesian politics.

"NasDem is not at all a threat to us," Idrus said. "We just want to give them a political lesson that it takes honesty [to set up a political party]. How can they [claim to] work for some higher ideologies when they can't even put their party together honestly?"

The NasDem Party boasts several Golkar members in its ranks, largely through its loose affiliation with the National Democrats social organization, commonly known as Nasdem.

Nasdem, the group, is chaired by Surya Paloh, a media mogul and senior Golkar member who set up the organization after losing the Golkar chairmanship to tycoon Aburizal Bakrie in 2009.

Although Surya is not registered as a member of NasDem the party, Sugeng Suparwoto, the NasDem deputy chairman, said he was among those bankrolling the party.

Several Golkar members are registered members of the Nasdem organization, including Ferry Mursidan Baldan, Jeffrie Geovanie and Syamsul Muarif.

Ferry, previously a Golkar associate chairman, is now a member of the Nasdem executive board, while Jeffrie, a Golkar legislator, heads the Nasdem's Jakarta chapter. Syamsul is a former secretary general of Golkar and now secretary general of the Nasdem group.

Although NasDem Party officials have insisted their group is a separate entity altogether from the social organization, Idrus said it was important for all Golkar members, including Surya, to dissociate themselves from both if they wanted to retain their Golkar membership.

"For us, both are the same," he said. "It's the time [for NasDem] to show honest and more gentlemanly politics. They shouldn't manipulate their formal standing [as a separate entity]."

At the NasDem declaration ceremony, however, party chairman Patrice Rio Capella said NasDem did not fear losing some of its active members to other political parties, including Golkar. "We don't worry about that," he said. "But I don't know if Golkar is worrying about it."

Ikrar Nusa Bhakti, a political analyst at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), said that although the NasDem Party still needed to work on a lot of things, it was not impossible for the new party to pose a threat to Golkar.

He said that given its massive campaigns, "it's not impossible that people will turn to them [in the next elections]."

He added that the Golkar members now active with Nasdem, the organization, were those who failed to gain a bigger role for themselves in Golkar after the 2009 caucus. Ikrar said these members were now calculating their chances for advancement with both Golkar and NasDem, and would go with the party that offered them the best future prospects.

For voters in general, Ikrar continued, the advent of NasDem provided an exciting alternative to established parties like Golkar. The critical point for NasDem now, he said, might be its effort to find a national figurehead through which it could garner nationwide attention.

"Because when people look at Golkar and Aburizal, they still link the man to the Lapindo mudflow disaster and alleged tax fraud," Ikrar said, referring to scandals that have tainted the Golkar chairman's reputation in recent years.

Andrinof Chaniago, a political analyst from the University of Indonesia, said that NasDem would have to contend for votes not just with Golkar but also the ruling Democratic Party and the People's Conscience Party (Hanura).

"It's normal for Golkar to issue this warning because they share the same target voters," he said. However, he said it should not be read as a sign of concern: "Golkar's just concerned about the ethics" of NasDem recruiting new members through the social organization, he said.

Politicking aside, Andrinof said he believed that NasDem stood to do well among the nationalist voters it was targeting. The outcome, he said, would depend on how well the party worked and who it pushed as its national figurehead.

Sugeng said the party would continue building up its voter base and finding the best members to fill key positions in the party. He also stressed that the NasDem party would do fine even if Golkar members withdrew from either the party or the social organization.

"Even Surya would let them leave if they had to," he said. But he emphasized that the party and the social organizations were two different entities, with the latter not allowed to take part in political activities.