Ezra Sihite – Responding to questions about Aburizal Bakrie's chance to win 2014 presidential election, the Golkar Party says its own recent survey shows its chairman's electability continues to rise.
The latest survey conducted by the party showed that the business tycoon trailed only Prabowo Subianto, the founder of the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), Golkar secetary general Idrus Marham said on Monday.
"It's close. Pak Ical [Aburizal] gets 16 percent while Prabowo gets 17 percent," he said. The survey results boost party's members confidence to fully support Aburizal, Idrus said.
On Saturday, Aburizal reiterated his readiness to become Golkar's presidential candidate in 2014 election. Some senior Golkar members, however, are resisting Aburizal's candidacy, expressing fear that he is unknown to the majority of grassroots voters.
Former Justice and Human Rights Minister Andi Matalatta expressed doubt that party officials in the regions supported Aburizal's candidacy. He also criticized the party officials' declaration of Aburizal as the party's sole candidate for 2014 without getting input from voters at the regional level.
Recently, Akbar Tandjung, the chairman of Golkar's central leadership board, also questioned the party's hasty decision to name Aburizal as the sole candidate, saying that the party was moving too quickly.
He said that former party chairman Jusuf Kalla, an ex-vice president, should be considered as a good candidate. "Surveys show that J.K. would do pretty well," he said. "This is something we need to discuss first. We can't just ignore what the surveys say about J.K. After all, he repeatedly said he would be up for it."
On Monday, another Golkar senior politician questioned the surveys in general. "Pak Ical has said that the party's presidential candidate will be determined by surveys. However, I haven't heard of a mechanism to determine what kind of surveys we will use as a benchmark," said Hajriyanto Y. Thohari, the deputy speaker of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR).
He argued that internal surveys could not determine whether Aburizal was popular enough to win the election.
Idrus dismissed suggestions that the party was not united behind Aburizal. "We've done the survey and he's coming on top," he said. Idrus said Aburizal's electability would continue to increase as the party intensified campaign efforts at the local level.
"Party officials will travel down to the villages. Right now, we are focusing on villages in Central Java. After these programs, we will hold another survey," he said.
Golkar launched a campaign fund-raiser of sorts last week, requiring its members at the House of Representatives to spend Rp 10 million ($1,110) each on merchandise with Aburizal's face.
The campaign package contains 1,000 plastic bags, T-shirts and banners with Aburizal's face on them as the country's second-biggest party confirmed the chairman's candidacy for the 2014 presidential election.
Each official is required to fill the 1,000 plastic bags with basic commodities, which will be distributed in the region. Several election monitoring groups denounced the move as an early effort to bribe voters.