The political parties behind Prabowo and vice-president-elect Gibran Rakabuming Raka, Jokowi’s eldest son, have been working to form a grand alliance to back their preferred candidates in the local elections. Dubbed the KIM-plus, the alliance had appeared likely to push all other candidates out of certain key races.

Last week, however, the Constitutional Court ruled to lower the share of the popular vote that political parties or groups of parties required to be eligible to nominate candidates for regional head elections, restoring hope for more competitive races in November.

Some members of the extended KIM alliance are now going their own way in the gubernatorial races in densely populated West Java, East Java and Banten.

In West Java on Thursday, two newcomers to the KIM alliance, the PKS and the NasDem Party, registered their own gubernatorial candidate pair, Ahmad Syaikhu and Ilham Habibie. The duo will be running against KIM candidate Dedi Mulyadi of the Gerindra Party and his running mate Erwan Setiawan of the Golkar Party.

The same day, another extended KIM member, the PKB, registered an in-house pairing of Acep Adang Ruhiyat and Gitalis Dwi Natarina for the West Java gubernatorial race with the local General Elections Commission (KPU).

As of the time of writing, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which had been ineligible to field its own candidate under the previous higher nomination threshold, had yet to register a candidate pair. KPU registration was to remain open until midnight.