Prabowo’s March to Presidency Gets Boost

Fuente: 
The Jakarta Globe
Fecha de publicación: 
26 Dic 2013

A rare meeting this week between President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Prabowo Subianto, one of the front-runners to replace him next year, has rekindled long-running speculation about a possible coalition between the two former Army generals’ parties.

The meeting took place behind closed doors on Tuesday morning at the State Palace, with Prabowo, the founder and chief patron of the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), telling reporters afterward that he and the president had seen eye-to-eye on many of the economic and social issues affecting the country.

“I told him that Gerindra wishes to nurture close ties with all stakeholders in the best interests of the people and the country, and he was very welcoming of Gerindra’s stance and my stance,” he said.

He stopped short of saying whether they had discussed the possibility of a tie-up between Gerindra and Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party — the determining factor in whether Prabowo gets a presidential ticket in next July’s election — but hinted the president was amenable to the idea.

“He has expressed his desire to step down gracefully and wants to set a good example for the transition [to the next president] in a friendly manner,” he said.

The meeting between the two men, who served in the Army during the same period and rose to the rank of general before retiring in contrasting fashion — Prabowo was discharged following an investigation into the abduction of student activists, while Yudhoyono went on to join the reform-era cabinet — comes at a critical moment in the months before the 2014 legislative and presidential elections.

Opinion polls have long ranked Prabowo as one of the front-runners to win the presidency, behind only Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo. However, the latter has publicly denied any presidential ambitions, and his party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), has suggested in recent weeks that it may in fact nominate its chairwoman, Megawati Soekarnoputri — who lost two elections to Yudhoyono, the former chief security minister in her cabinet.

While this may favor Prabowo, the main hurdle in his path is the low number of votes that his party is expected to garner in April’s legislative election.

Under the electoral law, only parties or coalitions that win 25 percent of votes in the legislative election or have 20 percent of seats at the House of Representatives may nominate a candidate for the presidential election.

Gerindra’s traditional partner, the PDI-P, has made it clear that no matter which party it joins forces with, its own candidate will get the presidential slot — much to the chagrin of Gerindra officials who say the PDI-P owes Prabowo the ticket for agreeing to run with Megawati in 2009.

With the Golkar Party determined that its chairman, Aburizal Bakrie, will be its candidate in 2014, that has left Gerindra with just the option of the Democrats — who have no strong figureheads to take Yudhoyono’s place — as the last major party to help boost its vote count.

The prospect of a Gerindra-Democrat coalition has come as little surprise, both to party insiders as well as outside analysts.

Sutan Bhatoegana, a Democrat legislator and member of the party’s central executive board, said on Tuesday that it was not out of the question.

“The Democrats are very open to embracing anyone. From the very beginning Yudhoyono has made it clear that there’s no way the Democrats can manage the country alone,” he said as quoted by Detik.com.

He emphasized that while a coalition was possible, it would have to be based on shared ideologies and platforms.

“I need to remind any party that wants to form a coalition with us that they need to be on the same page as us in terms of thinking about the country,” Sutan said.

The question of the presidential candidate to be nominated by such a coalition, he said, should be determined by which party in the bloc draws the most votes in the legislative election.

“If we get more votes [than the coalition partner], then the candidate should be one of ours, and vice versa,” he said.

Muhammad Qodari, the executive director of Indo Barometer, a polling agency, said on Wednesday that a Gerindra-Democrat coalition was “the most logical” combination out there.

“I believe Yudhoyono can already see the possibility of a coalition with Gerindra,” he said as quoted by Republika, noting that poor poll results indicated the Democrats, unlike Golkar and the PDI-P, would not get enough votes in April to be able to nominate their own candidate in July.

The polls also show Prabowo to be a far stronger potential candidate than any of the 11 people currently vying for the Democrats’ nod in that party’s much-hyped “presidential convention.”

The convention has been written off by some analysts as mere window dressing, with Pramono Edhie Wibowo, one of the contestants and Yudhoyono’s brother-in-law, expected to be handed the nomination regardless of the results.

Qodari said partnering up with Gerindra would give Yudhoyono a pretext to cut short the convention process and appoint Pramono, the former Army chief of staff, as Prabowo’s running mate. While a ticket featuring an ex-general is common, and almost considered de rigueur in Indonesian politics, the prospect of two former Army top brass on the same ticket is unprecedented — something that Qodari said could play to the pair’s advantage.

“Prabowo and Pramono both have a military background, and that’s what makes them unique. What they need to do is embellish their credentials as strong leaders who don’t do things by half measures,” he said.

However, he noted that even if all these possibilities played out, the success of the Prabowo-Pramono ticket at the polls would still depend to a large extent on who the PDI-P chose to nominate. If Joko gets the nod, Qodari said, then the race is effectively over.

“All of the surveys that we’ve conducted show Joko ahead of all the other presidential contenders,” he said.

Another possible running mate for Prabowo, should the Gerindra-Democrat coalition take shape, is Hatta Rajasa, the coordinating minister for the economy and also chairman of the National Mandate Party (PAN), the Democrats’ closest partner in the current six-party coalition.

Hatta, whose daughter is married to Yudhoyono’s youngest son, is considered one of the president’s closest advisers, and was believed to have been instrumental in bringing about the meeting with Prabowo, with whom he held coalition talks earlier this year.

Viva Yoga Mauladi, the head of the PAN’s 2014 election team, said Hatta and Prabowo had “good chemistry and would complement one another.

“Hatta and Prabowo share the same political and economic visions. Indonesia really needs this pair” in 2014, he said.

Author/Autor:Ezra Sihite

Source/Fuente:http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/prabowos-march-to-presidency-gets-bo...