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'We have to get a lot of seats': Megawati shows who’s boss at PDI-P congress
Megawati emphasized that she would not accept it if President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo gave her party only four Cabinet posts.
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Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri delivers a speech during the opening ceremony of the fifth PDI-P congress in Sanur, Bali, on Thursday. The congress is taking place from Aug. 8 to 11. (JP/Zul Trio Anggono).
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T
he audience at the opening of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle’s (PDI-P) national congress on Thursday included the chairmen of four of the country’s biggest political parties, five Cabinet ministers, the speaker of the House of Representatives and the vice president-elect, not to mention the sitting president and the vice president.
But the dominant presence in the room at the Grand Inna Bali Beach Hotel in Denpasar was the woman at the center of the stage: PDI-P chairwoman and matriarch Megawati Soekarnoputri. And she was not pulling any punches.
“Now that Pak Jokowi has won, we have to get a lot of [Cabinet] seats,” she boomed over the podium to laughter and applause from the hundreds of PDI-P members in the crowd. “Of course — we’ve won [the legislative elections] twice!”
Megawati emphasized that she would not accept it if President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo gave her party only four Cabinet posts.
“Even those who didn’t [win] asked for [positions],” she said, in an apparent jab at opposition parties like Gerindra, which have recently expressed their desire to join the government. Sitting in the front row, Gerindra chairman Prabowo Subianto could only smile and clap along with the rest of the crowd.
“Here at the PDI-P congress, I respectfully request for the PDI-P to be given the highest number of [minister posts] in the Cabinet,” she continued.
In the speech following Megawati’s, President Jokowi, a PDI-P member himself, gave a direct response to the former president’s forthright request.
