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Rivals scramble to strike deal
Gerindra executive Andre Rosiade said that Prabowo would soon gather all political parties in his camp — the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), the Democrats and PAN — to talk about the fate of the coalition.
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Security measures: Police personnel stand guard outside the Constitutional Court in Central Jakarta on Wednesday ahead of the court’s ruling announcement of the disputed presidential election result on Thursday.
(The Jakarta Post/Dhoni Setiawan )
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s the Constitutional Court’s ruling on the presidential election result looms, representatives from the rival camps are reportedly scrambling to strike a political deal.
Gerindra Party chairman and unsuccessful presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto, who submitted the legal challenge to the result, returned from a trip to Germany on Wednesday evening, hours before the court is scheduled to rule on the case on Thursday.
According to Gerindra executives, Prabowo went abroad for a medical checkup.
But sources from two political parties from the government coalition as well as one from the opposition camp said that Prabowo stopped off in Bangkok before returning to Indonesia.
The sources, who requested anonymity, said that in Bangkok Prabowo met a representative from President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s camp to talk about the possibility of Gerindra joining the government coalition.
The meeting also discussed the allocation of key Cabinet positions for the party. When asked who represented Jokowi in the meeting, the sources said it was either National Intelligence Agency (BIN) head Budi Gunawan or his aide. The spy chief is known as a close confidant of Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri. Tempo magazine reported on Monday that Prabowo had met with Budi to discuss the same topic in Bali last month.
No Gerindra officials have confirmed the meeting. Budi, meanwhile, was not available for comment on Wednesday.
