W

hen President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said he may open a nasi goreng eatery after he steps down in 2014, no one took him seriously. In his speech before the Indonesian community in Budapest last week, he said he was contemplating several options beyond the presidency. It’s a sure bet that whatever he does, he will remain active in public life. He may not be frying rice, but by all accounts he is already cooking something up.

Today, Yudhoyono faces the biggest challenge of his political career. He needs to wrest back control of the Democratic Party and bring it back from the brink of losing its dominant position. Its public standing has taken a heavy beating because of a series of corruption scandals.

Political infighting is loosening his grip on the party which he helped found in 2002 and has since cultivated into the vehicle by which he won the presidency in 2004 and 2009. By the 2009 elections, Democrats considered themselves Indonesia’s largest political party. Most opinion polls today however, say they aren’t even in the top three and with elections just over a year away, time is running out.

Yudhoyono knows that he does not have absolute control over the party. But he is not about to cede it altogether. He would do well to turn to people he can trust to make sure the party acquiesces to his wishes and there is nothing like trusting one of the family to help run the party. This is his party, and this is the Yudhoyono dynasty.

To reverse the Democrats’ decline, he needs to clean up the party by removing the corrupt people, select a new chairman and name a presidential candidate who will resonate with voters. Barred from running after two consecutive terms, it is clear that Yudhoyono, or his family, intend to be part of the evolving Indonesian political landscape which is ruled by old and emerging dynasties.

Three general elections after the fall of strongman Soeharto should be sufficient for any family with dynastic ambitions to figure out how to beat the system. Yudhoyono is ahead of the game, building his own political dynasty from scratch and winning the elections in 2004 and 2009.

It’s not rocket science. To play the dynastic political game, you need to have ambition, connections and plenty of money, or easy access to money. With presidential nominations in the hands of the big parties, you either need to build a new political party, or buy your way into an existing one. The rest of the game is about convincing voters that you’re their best candidate.

The 2014 elections are already looking more like a contest between Indonesia’s political dynasties and not so much between the parties or ideologies they represent.

Prabowo Subianto, a former general and the front-runner presidential candidate, runs the Gerindra Party. Aburizal Bakrie, head of the diversified Bakrie business empire, may be trailing in the surveys but his Golkar Party looks likely to win the most votes in the legislative elections. Former president Megawati Soekarnoputri, the chair of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), has not ruled out running again in 2014 despite losing twice to Yudhoyono.

Yudhoyono faces a dilemma because the Democrats still have no viable or credible candidate to offer to voters.

Both his sons are too young to step in and the President has already publicly ruled out his wife Ani Yudhoyono. That leaves him with only Gen. Pramono Edhie Wibowo, the First Lady’s younger brother, as the only candidate available from within the family. One possible reason why Yudhoyono has not named his presidential candidate is because Pramono, currently the chief-of-staff of the Army, won’t be available until he reaches the mandatory military retirement age of 58 in June.

Yudhoyono’s urgent priority is to ensure that someone he can trust takes over the chair of the party which became vacant after the resignation of Anas Urbaningrum. The party must hold an extraordinary congress to elect a new chairman who can sign the list of candidates for the 2014 legislative elections which it must submit to the general election commission in the second week of April.

He needs someone with the administrative, organizational and political skills, and yet someone trustworthy who will not undermine his grip over the party.

Nominating his second son Edhie “Ibas” Baskoro, currently the party secretary-general, would smack so much of nepotism that it could backfire.

Yudhoyono actually had the ideal set up before Anas came in 2010. The party was managed by his wife’s brother-in-law, Hadi Utomo, an unassuming man who kept a low-key presence as he steered the party to victory in the legislative and presidential elections in 2009. He may be just the right man if he could be recalled. His nomination would still have a nepotistic flavor, but at least Hadi has a solid track record of running the party.

Yudhoyono should have learned the lessons of the 2010 congress when outsiders snatched control of the party from his hands. After letting the democratic processes determine the outcome of the congress, he allowed Anas to outsmart him in the art of Javanese politics. Yudhoyono’s anointed candidate, Andi Mallarangeng, did not even make it to the runoff.

Time is too short for Yudhoyono to find the perfect candidate to lead the party. He may have to compromise. But whoever gets elected, Yudhoyono must ensure that he still has the prerogative of naming the presidential candidate. If he loses control over the party and then the presidential nomination, then that nasi goreng business is looking more and more attractive.