While the presidential election is still five months away and the preceding legislative elections have not even been held yet, discourse and public debates concerning the race that will determine the country’s leadership for the next five years has begun to heat up.
One of the issues dominating the debates is whether incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Vice President Jusuf Kalla will continue their coalition and again run for leadership on the same ticket, or will Kalla run as a presidential candidate this time?
As the legislative election, the results of which are expected to be the catalyst for the subsequent presidential election, won’t be held until April, it is indeed premature to say what the latter election will look like.
Indonesia is not the same as the United States, where political parties announce their presidential and vice presidential candidates, with the approval of party members, prior to campaigning. In America it is the candidates and their vision that sell more than their respective political parties. The Americans vote for leaders that they believe will bring changes for the betterment and glory of the United States of America.
Here, in Indonesia, most of the political parties tend to introduce their presidential-vice presidential candidates only after the results of the April legislative election are announced.
One of the two largest political parties – The Golkar Party – and a number of medium sized political parties including the United Development Party (PPP), the National Awakening Party (PKB), the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and the National Mandate Party (PAN) have yet to announce their pairs of presidential-vice presidential candidates. Another big political party – the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) – and the dark horse in the 2004 presidential election, the Democratic Party (PD) have named their presidential candidates but not their vice presidential candidates – again in anticipation of the results of the legislative elections.
As predicted however, the battle for state leadership will involve three to four pairs of candidates. With the PDI-P having announced its chairwoman, Megawati Soekarnoputri, and PD having named Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as their presidential candidates – both are popular and interchangeably leading in opinion polls -- there are two remaining potential presidential candidates on offer.
Here the Jusuf Kalla factor is interesting to consider in the days ahead of the presidential election. Having widely been regarded as “the real organizer” of daily state affairs, with his firm determination to handle crucial and sometimes unpopular state issues and policies, compared to the President who has been tagged by many as “a doubter”, there has been increasing pressure within the Golkar Party, which Kalla chairs, to nominate its own candidate – preferably Kalla — for the presidential election.
Kalla himself has repeatedly signaled that Golkar will wait until the announcement of the results of the legislative election prior to announcing the party’s presidential and vice presidential candidates.
It is logical for Kalla to maintain his stance of waiting for the legislative election results. On the other hand however, it conclusively shows Golkar’s doubt as to the party’s chance of victory in
the legislative elections. Moreover, the 2004 presidential election should taught Golkar that winning the largest number of votes in the legislative elections is no guarantee that a member of your party will be president.
Despite polling results not putting Kalla among the top three presidential nominees it is rational for Kalla to run for presidency on his own ticket this time as it is widely regarded that a (presidential) candidate’s image and track record is far more important and bankable than a party itself.
To continue running as Yudho-yono’s running mate would worsen friction among factions in Golkar as there is the possibility that party’s congress, the highest authority in decision-making process, will nominate someone else as the party’s presidential candidate — Yogyakarta’s Sri Sultan Hamengkubuwono X, former chairman Akbar Tandjung and former Golkar members Wiranto and Prabowo Subianto, just to name a few possibilities.
The latest rift between Golkar and the PD over a recent statement by a senior PD official regarding Golkar’s likely loss in the legislative elections has shaken the steady Golkar-PD coalition. If the rift widens, it will potentially break the coalition and become the triggering factor for the parting of the Yudhoyono-Kalla partnership.
The rift has not significantly affected the Golkar-PD coalition. For the time being, it seems likely that Yudhoyono and Kalla will maintain the coalition. So far both Yudhoyono and Kalla haven’t shown the guts to divorce.
