The PKB membership has declined following a split by members who now carry the banner of the “Gus Dur PKB” and the Ulema National Awakening Party (PKNU), neither of which is recognized by the government.

Lily Chadijah Wahid, the sister of late former president Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid, who is also a member of the PKB led by Muhaimin Iskandar, said Tuesday that it was important to bring the “Gus Dur PKB” and the PKNU back into the fold to ensure that the PKB had enough members to meet the proposed increase in the parliamentary threshold from 2.5 percent to 5 percent.

“The next parliamentary election is in 2014. Should they hold the congress in 2013, there would not be enough time to consolidate political power with the splinter groups,” Lily told The Jakarta Post.

“The party would most likely be doomed if we didn’t consolidate,” she said.

Lily said if such a merger failed, she would prefer to join another political party that shared the same nationalist ideology as the PKB — the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).

The 2008 PKB national congress in Ancol, North Jakarta, had scheduled the next congress for 2013.

Meanwhile, Gus Dur PKB members are announcing their own congress this year, as mandated in 2005.

The breakaway faction is led by Yenny Wahid, the daughter of Gus Dur.

Due to prolonged infighting, the PKB has found itself in a mess in the national political arena after it garnered less than 5 percent of the votes in the 2009 election, down from 10 percent in 2004.

With heated debate among members of the House of Representatives over a plan to increase the parliamentary threshold to 5 percent, the party is embroiled in more bickering about political maneuvers to fight for political survival.

Muhaimin, who is also the manpower and transmigration minister, has welcomed the idea of forming a political confederation with the National Mandate Party (PAN) to secure parliamentary seats in the upcoming legislative elections.

“The PAN’s plan to form a confederation is a very positive step. The PKB fully supports it,” he said.

PAN legislator Muhammad Najib said the PAN confederation was expected to also serve as a political umbrella for smaller political parties that would take part in the upcoming election, and whose cumulative votes were insufficient to meet the current 2.5 percent threshold.

“However, we haven’t really discussed how the mechanism is going to work, or which parties would be accommodated by the confederation,” he told the Post.

PKB legislator Effendi Choirie said the PKB had to reconcile with some Nadhlatul Ulama (NU) figures, who so far had been overlooked or ignored, in lieu of focusing on the confederation.

“The confederation is just a platform to accommodate the interests of some political elites from small parties that mostly don’t have any political basis at the grass root levels,” he said.

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