TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Gerindra courts six small parties
Six small parties will join the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), a move expected to strengthen the performance of the legislature’s second-smallest party in 2014
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
S
ix small parties will join the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), a move expected to strengthen the performance of the legislature’s second-smallest party in 2014.
“On Sunday we will sign an agreement to form a confederation that will hopefully strengthen our showing in the 2014 general elections,” Gerindra founder Prabowo Subianto said Saturday.
Gerindra opened its national leadership meeting in Sentul near Bogor on Sunday.
“This will be a test case. If [the alliance] remains stable, we will eventually merge,” he was quoted as saying by Antara news agency.
The six parties that will ally with Gerindra, Prabowo said, were the Labor Party, the Freedom Party, the Indonesian Nahdlatul Ulama Community Party, the Marhaenism Indonesian National Party, the Sovereignty Party and the Indonesian Union Party.
Prabowo said Gerindra would welcome other parties.
Gerindra, which garnered 4.5 percent of the votes in the April 2009 legislative elections, was one of the two parties in the House of Representatives that rejecting calls to increase the parliamentary threshold — the minimum percent of votes a party needs to get seats in the House — from the current 2.5 percent to 5 percent.
Indonesian Institute of Sciences political observer Lili Romli said merging or joining forces by way of a confederation was a “realistic move” that smaller parties had to take if they intended to obtain seats at the House.
“But it is important that they join forces on a shared platform so the union will last longer,” Lili told The Jakarta Post.
He said given that Indonesian parties were homogenized, adopting only either a nationalist or Islamist platform, it should be easier for parties to merge.
The Democratic Party has monitored Gerindra efforts, saying it was a serious political move for the 2014 election.
“It’s a survival plan to face the upcoming election,” Democratic Party advisory board member Ahmad Mubarok said as quoted by tempointeraktif.com on Sunday.
