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ollowing internal fissures within member parties of the Red-and-White Coalition and growing support for direct elections, the parties are now eyeing becoming independent forces at the House of Representatives.

Although leaders of political parties in the coalition have claimed that they remain committed to maintaining the opposition alliance, the coalition will potentially break into independent factions, just like the Democratic Party, which has more flexible stances on the government'€™s policies.

National Mandate Party (PAN) lawmaker and deputy secretary-general Teguh Juwarno said that after coalition members secured leadership positions at the House and the People'€™s Consultative Assembly (MPR), members of the Red-and-White Coalition had no other common goal to unite them.

'€œSince the beginning, this coalition was not built on a solid ideological [platform]. Thus, our cooperation will continuously be tested [during the House'€™s deliberation] of many strategic issues,'€ Teguh told The Jakarta Post on Friday in a phone interview.

'€œConsequently, the political coalitions will definitely be driven by pragmatic [motives].'€

The Red-and-White Coalition '€” which gathered political parties supporting the unsuccessful presidential bid of Gerindra Party chief patron Prabowo Subianto '€” currently has 291 out of 560 House seats, as opposed to 269 seats controlled by President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo'€™s Great Indonesia Coalition.

Aside from securing leadership posts in the House and the MPR, the coalition also sponsored the controversial deliberation of the Regional Elections (Pilkada) Law that has repealed direct elections for regional heads.

Democratic Party chairman Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who was the country'€™s president at the time, issued two government regulations in lieu of law (Perppu) to bring back the direct-elections mechanism.

He has also made members of the Red-and-White Coalition sign a deal to support the Perppu in return for his party'€™s support for the coalition'€™s leadership in the House and the MPR.

The coalition, however, has been on the verge of breaking apart recently, after a split within the Golkar Party, the current leader of the opposition coalition.

At a recent national meeting in Bali, the leader of one faction of Golkar, Aburizal Bakrie, announced a plan to break away from the deal with Yudhoyono and rejected the Perppu in the House.

His stance was resisted by Yudhoyono who directly sealed a new alliance with President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo to support the Perppu.

Jokowi'€™s coalition, led by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) has been supporting direct elections.

Another section of Golkar, led by Agung Laksono, has kept its promise to support the Perppu.

A faction of the United Development Party (PPP) led by Djan Faridz confirmed on Friday that the party would now play a '€œbalancing'€ role, a term repeatedly used by the Dems to describe its political position after the presidential election.

The Dems claims that it is an independent entity outside the Red-and-White Coalition.

'€œNow, we are still with the Red-and-White Coalition. We will be a balancing power. It means that we will support what is good [for the people] and stop what is wrong. We will be criticizing [the government],'€ he said on the sidelines of the party'€™s national meeting in Jakarta.

The PPP, a supporter of Prabowo during the presidential election, has also split into two factions following a prolonged rift that started during campaigning ahead of the presidential election.

Another faction of the PPP, led by Muhammad Romahurmuziy, has joined Jokowi'€™s coalition.