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Green Party seeks authorization for 2024 election run
The party hopes to bring environmental issues to the forefront of Indonesia’s political discourse.
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A screen grab from a video footage taken during the first national congress of the Indonesian Green Party (PHI) in early March 2021. (The Jakarta Post/Twitter)
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ctivists are seeking to establish an electorally viable political party to bring environmental issues to the forefront of Indonesian politics, a strategy that has been attempted before in the country.
Members of Green Party Indonesia (PHI) declared their intention to register to run in the 2024 elections at the party’s first national congress in late February of this year. The party’s co-president, John Muhammad, said Indonesia urgently needed a green party as severe environmental issues threatened the country and its people.
A central component of the party’s platform is ensuring the significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, as proposed in the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. The panel urged all nations to work to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030. Otherwise, the report noted, the climate crisis would trigger deadly catastrophes.
Despite this urgency, Indonesia passed the Job Creation Law last year, which, John noted, encouraged the use of fossil fuels and other dirty energy sources that exacerbated the climate crisis.
Other prevailing policies, including the country’s plan to be carbon neutral by 2070, would not be enough to mitigate the crisis, he said.
“Our choices are limited. Like it or not, we will need a green party [to influence political decisions],” John added.
Read also: Environmental issues still low on agenda as pragmatism prevails: Experts
