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Dems at center of 2024 alliance building
The Democrats have been meeting with the pro-government parties, which are seeking to build bigger alliances and bring the largest opposition party into their respective electoral blocs.
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Participants from the Democratic Party take part in a parade in Jakarta on March 15, 2014 to mark the opening of the legislative election campaign in Indonesia that year. (Agence France Presse/Bay Ismoyo)
The Democratic Party has found itself at the center of increasingly fluid alliance building ahead of the November deadline for presidential-candidate registration, with pro-government parties lining up to welcome the party into their respective folds despite the Dems’ commitment to backing the leading opposition figure.
The Democrats have already joined forces with the NasDem Party and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) in an electoral alliance dubbed the Coalition for Change and Unity (KPP), which endorses former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan as its presumptive presidential candidate.
But the Democrats have been meeting with the pro-government parties, which are seeking to build bigger alliances and bring the largest opposition party into their respective electoral blocs.
On Thursday, executives of the Gerindra Party visited the Dems headquarters in Menteng, Central Jakarta, where they discussed current national affairs and the upcoming presidential race. Gerindra secretary-general Ahmad Muzani told reporters after the meeting that the party did not “seek to tempt the Democratic Party to change its political decision” to back Anies.
Gerindra, however, will keep its door open should the opposition party want to join the Gerindra-led alliance, Muzani added. He closed the high-profile meeting with a pantun (four-line rhyming poem): “Going to the market to buy avocados/we bought them at the floating market/Pak Prabowo will get stronger/if the Democratic Party joins us.”
Thursday’s meeting came months after meetings between leaders of the Democrats and the Gerindra-led alliance.
Gerindra chairman Prabowo Subianto visited Democratic Party patron Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in May at the latter’s hometown of Pacitan, East Java. Analysts saw the visit as a symbolic move by Prabowo to win over Yudhoyono and his loyal supporters at home.
