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em>Although the general election may be three years away, political parties have already deployed their gear to gain support, particularly from the young bracket of voters. The Jakarta Post’s Hasyim Widhiarto explores the parties’ strategies to lure the young. Here are the stories:

Arya Sandiyuda, 27, is among the youngest functionaries of the Islam-based Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) sitting on the party’s highest executive board.

Arya was lured into the party in high school after joining liqa, a regular, small-group meeting organized by the party to nurture its party members and sympathizers.

“My passion [for joining the PKS] grew in university, but I always tried not to openly show it until I finished my studies,” said Arya recently, who is now a member of the PKS Foreign Affairs Department.

Spending most of his college years as an activist for University of Indonesia’s Islamic student organization, Arya’s political talent was groomed through the PKS’s intern program with legislators Suswono, now Agriculture Minister, and Adang Daradjatun, former National Police deputy chief.

“The party has recently appointed me to represent them in a two-year international leadership program for young politicians in Europe,” he said proudly.

Unlike Arya, Dirgayuza “Yuza” Setiawan, 21, is taking a shorter path to the top as an executive with Tunas Indonesia Raya (Tidar), a youth wing organization of Prabowo Subianto’s Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra).

Yuza’s engagement with the party is mostly helped by his family and close friends.

“My father is one of Gerindra executives, while most of my friends have family in the party too,” said Yuza, currently studying at Melbourne University, Australia.

Because of his above-average computer skills, the party assigned Yuza to help develop and maintain its campaign through the Internet and social media.

Although the upcoming general election is still three years away, several political parties have aggressively drummed up bids for young and talented new members.

It is not surprising that many parties have already forged a tie with young members through youth organizations, family ties, networks of friends and communities.

In the 2014 general election, young voters will remain the largest market targeted by political parties.

There will be at least 180 million eligible voters in the election, of which between 55 and 60 percent of the expected voters would be between 17 and 39 years old, similar to the 2009 composition, according to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) projection.

Adityo Anugrah, 25, head of Tidar’s Bogor branch, said it was not difficult for him to introduce the newly-established party to young people. However, administrative constraints have slowed recruitment expansion.

“So far, we have received hundreds of membership applications from high-school students across the city,” said Adityo.

“However, most of them could not be approved because parents refused to allow them join the organization,” said Adityo.

Established to garner support from young voters, Tidar is aiming their campaign at people aged between 13 and 40 years old. But in Bogor and Jakarta, their main target is high school students.

“We just want to be realistic. It’s almost impossible for us to compete with more established [youth] organizations in universities, especially those ‘affiliated’ with political parties, particularly the PKS,” he said.

Unlike other established parties, including the Golkar Party, the United Development Party and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle [PDI-P], the PKS has a unique recruitment system of college students by infiltrating university bodies, including student senates and executive boards and student religious organizations.

At the University of Indonesia, for example, members of student organizations have personal, discrete affiliations with the PKS.

The PKS’s young politicians, including Arya, former legislator Rama Pratama and legislator Zulkifliemansyah, are products of the party’s systematic, well-planned regeneration efforts in grooming potential members from campus.

Zulkifliemansyah and Rama are former chairmen of the University of Indonesia’s prestigious Student Executive Body (BEM).

Around 30 percent of PKS’s eight million voters in the 2009 general election were below 30 years old, according to PKS senior politician Mahfudz Siddiq.

While the PKS’s aggressive recruitment is prominent in big cities, other established parties have tried to lure more from rural areas, where most of the nation’s voters reside.

Yorrys Raweyay, chairman of the Golkar’s Youth Alliance (AMPG), said he had never considered the PKS’s intensive member recruitment as a serious threat to his party, as there was also huge potential in rural areas.

“As one of the oldest political parties, Golkar has successfully established an organizational structure reaching the lowest levels of communities, something that many new parties, including the PKS, would need a long time to establish,” said Yorrys, who also chairs the party’s Youth and Sport Department.

Established in 2000, the AMPG claimed to have around five million members as of last year, according to Yorrys.

He said the organization is currently hoping to recruit 400,000 new members, aged between 20 and 30 years old, by 2014.

Golkar will launch a series of leadership training programs intended to lure young voters in rural areas, starting next month in Jakarta.

“We hope to see our members playing the role of party [campaign] front-men for the upcoming elections,” he said.

While some political parties have relied on social media and community and cultural approaches to win young voters, others are trying different strategies, such as providing benefits.

The Democratic Party of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is taking the easy route rather than establishing a concerted recruitment system.

”We are now planning to introduce our party’s identity card, which will provide its holder with discount benefits in certain stores,” Roy Suryo, secretary for the Democratic Party’s membership division said recently.

The target is to see between 11 and 12 percent of the country’s population registered officially as party members by 2014.

Despite the hype of the recruitment system, critics have long believed any efforts to lure young members were mostly artificial, according to political analyst Cecep Hidayat of the University of Indonesia.

Artificial, he said, in that most top party executives have been thus far reluctant to allow their younger colleagues to hold important and influential positions within the party management.

But the Democratic Party and the PKS are the exceptions. Their top executives are mostly younger
than 50.

“The campaign to attract young, potential members would mean nothing until political parties revise and uphold their internal reward and punishment system so that their young members can have a clear picture about their future career in the party,” said Cecep.

Yorris has somehow noted Cecep’s belief, saying it was almost impossible to ask the “older generation” within the party to voluntarily step aside and give more room for their younger, fresher colleagues. These conditions are eminent in parties that have existed since the 1970s.

“The bigger the party, the longer the [political] queue for top posts,” he said.