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PSI, Perindo: Small parties with big dreams
Various polls suggest that newcomer parties may not pass the parliamentary threshold of 4 percent, but they remain optimistic about their chances.
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Samples of various ballot papers are displayed at the KPU office. JP/Dhoni Setiawan (JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
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number of relatively new political parties, including the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI) and the United Indonesia Party (Perindo), are standing in the April 17 legislative elections. Various polls suggest that the newcomers might not meet the parliamentary threshold of 4 percent, but the two parties remain optimistic about their chances.
According to its official website, the PSI has around 700,000 members in Indonesia, mostly from 20 to 30 years of age. The party also requires committee members to be under 45 years old, providing a stage for young people to get involved in politics.
As a coalition party that endorses President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s re-election bid, the PSI uses social media campaigns and online recruitment to woo millennials, including their #Merdeka100Persen (100 percent independent) initiative during Independence Day 2015.
Political analysts regard the PSI’s vision of pluralism and anticorruption as effective in attracting young voters, especially those who have little faith in longstanding political parties. It even described the House of Representatives’ spending of lump-sum grants as “legal robbery” in its initiative called “Bersih-Bersih DPR” (Cleaning Up the House of Representatives) held last year.
The party began from a discussion among five figures in 2014 in a café in Jakarta. Included was the former chairman of Muhammadiyah’s Student Association (IPM), Raja Juliani Antoni, and two ex-TV presenters, Grace Natalie and Isyana Bagoes Oka.
In the deliberation, they agreed that almost all institutions, including the police and the Indonesian Military (TNI), had continued reinventing themselves but political parties had been using the same method of putting up politically well-known candidates as their campaign faces since the New Order regime.
“We believe that our new vision of Indonesia could happen where regular citizens could exercise democracy by becoming mayors, governors or even the president,” said Raja, who is now the party’s secretary-general, as quoted by the official website.
