The recent decision of the largest opposition party, the Democratic Party, to join the Gerindra Party-led alliance backing Prabowo has closed the door on an alternative electoral alliance backing a fourth presidential and vice presidential pair, allowing parties to shift their focus to finalizing their nominations.

The Democrats supporting Defense Minister Prabowo represented an unexpected shift in alliance building ahead of February’s polls as they essentially swapped positions with the National Awakening Party (PKB), whose chairman Muhaimin Iskandar was named as the running mate of presumptive presidential candidate Anies Baswedan.

With Anies and Muhaimin now the first confirmed pairing for February’s election, all eyes are now on who will run alongside the two other likely presidential candidates, Prabowo and former Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo of the largest pro-government party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), as their running mates.

The hardest or easiest?

With the Democrats joining, Prabowo now leads the largest electoral alliance, dubbed the Indonesia Onward Coalition. Its members include his own party Gerindra, the Golkar Party, the National Mandate Party (PAN) and other smaller parties that do not hold seats at the House of Representatives, the Crescent Star Party (PBB), the Gelora Party and the Garuda Party.

Talks about who will run as Prabowo’s running mate are expected to have been challenging as major parties in the alliance have rallied to have their preferred candidate named as his running mate.