A National Mandate Party official has suggested that the party’s chairman, Hatta Rajasa could be a potential running mate to Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo in next year’s presidential election.
Laurens Bahang Dama, a National Mandate Party (PAN) legislator, said at an event on Saturday that Hatta, who is also the nation’s chief economics minister, would make a good deputy to Joko, who, according polls, would be the frontrunner in the 2014 presidential race if he chose to run.
“Anything is possible because politics are dynamic,” Laurens said in Jakarta, in reference to a possible Joko-Hatta tie-up.
PAN has long stated that it intends to nominate Hatta as its presidential candidate next year.
But Hatta has been polling very poorly, with the most recent figures, released last week by the United Data Center (PDB), showing only 1 percent of 1,200 respondents nationwide willing to vote for him, against 26 percent for Joko.
A poll by the National Survey Institute (LSN) that considered only senior political party officials, and thus omitted Joko, gave Hatta 5.2 percent of the votes among the 1,230 respondent.
Again, that put him far behind the leading contender, Prabowo Subianto of the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), who polled nearly 23 percent. Prabowo came second to Joko in the PDB poll with 20 percent.
Laurens said while the low numbers had prompted PAN officials to consider a vice presidential nomination for Hatta, the party would still push ahead with a presidential bid if it won more than 10 percent of vote in the legislative election, held three months before the presidential ballot.
“If we get double digits, then we’ll nominate Hatta as our candidate. If not, then we have to join another party’s ticket,” he said.
Hatta, who has not formally announced if he intends to run, remained coy on the issue at Saturday’s event.
“A party chairman has to be prepared for any eventuality,” he said in response to whether he was eying the presidential or vice presidential posts.
He added that he would only make a final decision much later.
“I’m not the kind of person to be rushed. There are other priorities and targets to be achieved first,” Hatta said, in an apparent reference to the legislative election.
Putra Jaya Hussein, the campaign manager for PAN’s legislative election, said it was understandable that Hatta would want to wait until after the election before evaluating where his party stood and whether he had enough political capital to mount a presidential bid or settle as the running mate to a stronger candidate.
“Hatta is waiting for the results of the legislative election. And that’s perfectly reasonable because he wants to see first how well the party performs,” Putra said.
However, he added the party was confident it would achieve its double digit target in the legislative election in April and could go on to nominate Hatta for the nation’s highest post in the presidential election in July.
by: Carlos Paath
source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/hatta-still-coy-on-presidential-bid/
