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Gerindra names its price
The Prabowo camp’s demand may cover at least eight posts, or a quarter of Cabinet seats, including the seats of coordinating maritime affairs minister, maritime affairs and fisheries minister, energy and mineral resources minister and agriculture minister.
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Gerindra Party chairman Prabowo Subianto (left) and President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo shake hands at the Lebak Bulus MRT station in South Jakarta on July 13. (JP/Seto Wardhana)
F
ollowing a meeting with President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, former presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto and the Gerindra Party are eyeing control of food and energy as a condition for joining the government.
In a meeting between the Gerindra Party chairman and the party’s advisory board on Friday at Prabowo’s residence in Hambalang, Bogor, West Java, the party said Prabowo would bring up the party’s concepts about food and energy security at a meeting with Jokowi and Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri, and would only move forward to join the government if their proposals were accepted.
“We will first share our concepts and not talk about the number of [Cabinet] seats. If [the proposals] are accepted, we will get a number of people to work with the concepts. If it all can be accommodated, we will be part of [the government],” Gerindra deputy chairman Sufmi Dasco Ahmad said.
“Otherwise, we would be outside by giving constructive criticism [to the government].”
Talks over Gerindra’s plan to enter the government accelerated on the heels of a meeting between the two leaders at the MRT station in Lebak Bulus on June 12, ending months of rivalry between the two camps that competed in the April presidential race.
Before both of them agreed to meet, Jokowi had offered to reconcile with Prabowo, which the latter did not accept pending the lawsuit at the Constitutional Court claiming that the election was marred by “structured, systematic and massive” electoral fraud.
Sources from two political parties in the government’s coalition and one from the opposition camp have also said Prabowo had met in June with a representative from Jokowi’s camp in Bangkok. One of the discussions was about the allocation of key positions for Gerindra in the next Cabinet. The meeting has never been publicly admitted to by either camp.
