Ical’s 2014 running mate ‘likely to be Javanese’

Aburizal Bakrie: (JP/R. Berto Wedhatama)

A senior Golkar Party figure says the party is eyeing a Javanese as a running mate for its chairman, Aburizal “Ical” Bakrie, in the 2014 presidential race.

Golkar Party supervisory board chief Akbar Tanjung said on Friday that while the party’s ongoing national meeting in Bogor, West Java, had determined Ical as its candidate for the 2014 election, the running mate for the business mogul was still being discussed.

He added that since Ical was from Lampung, Sumatra, it would be logical for the party to pick a Javanese running mate in order to appeal to a broader demographic of potential voters.

“Because he [Ical] is from Sumatra, it is reasonable if he decides to select a Javanese candidate to gain more support,” he said as quoted by tribunnews.com.

Up to 78 of the party’s branches in Yogyakarta earlier officially announced their support for Yogyakarta Governor Sri Sultan Hamengkubuwono X to run as the vice presidential candidate pairing Ical, a sole president candidate supported by the second-largest party at the House of Representatives.

Commenting on this, Akbar, a former Golkar Party chairman, said Sultan was indeed one of the front runners to accompany Ical to become Indonesia’s next leader.

Other names that were rumored to be in the running as included Army chief Gen. Pramono Edhie Wibowo – President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s brother-in-law – and Yudhoyono’s youngest son, Edhie Baskoro “Ibas” Yudhoyono, who is also the ruling Democratic Party’s secretary-general.

Both Pramono and Ibas are Javanese.

With the exception of the nation’s third president, Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie, who has a Javanese mother and a Gorontalo father, all of the previous Indonesian presidents were Javanese. (asa/mtq)