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Dems eye Sultan as presidential candidate
Democratic Party honor council chief Amir Syamsuddin says his party is eyeing Golkar Party figure Sri Sultan Hamengkubuwono X as a presidential candidate in the 2014 presidential race
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emocratic Party honor council chief Amir Syamsuddin says his party is eyeing Golkar Party figure Sri Sultan Hamengkubuwono X as a presidential candidate in the 2014 presidential race.
He said the reason for Sultan's selection was that his electability could compete with the two other probable presidential candidates, namely the Gerindra Party's Prabowo Subianto and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle's (PDI-P) Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo.
According to a recent survey commissioned by the Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI), Jokowi's electability was between 5 and 26 percent while Prabowo's was between 17 and 18 percent.
'In third position was Sri Sultan Hamengkubowono X, whose electability stood at 15 percent when he was partnered with one of the Democratic Party's presidential convention participants,' said Amir as quoted by kompas.com, adding that the chance was even bigger as the survey revealed 41 percent of undecided voters.
The law and human rights minister also admitted, however, that while trying to give people choices other than Jokowi and Prabowo, the Democratic Party had to be realistic in building a coalition with other political parties in its efforts to meet the presidential threshold.
Amir refused to comment when he was asked who among the convention participants was preparing to partner with Sri Sultan.
Earlier, Democratic Party spokesperson Ruhut Sitompul said Pramono Edhie Wibowo, former Army chief of staff who is also President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's brother in-law, had a chance to partner with the sultan as such a civil-military composition was regarded as an effective power source for a presidential candidate pair. (ebf)
