TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Analysis: PDI-P finds life at the top a bigger struggle
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) may have come out at the top in the last two general elections, but whether it can score a hat-trick in 2024 depends on whether it is fielding a strong presidential candidate who can help it win the votes.
In a speech marking the party’s 50th anniversary on Monday, PDI-P chair Megawati Soekarnoputri resisted pressure to name the party’s nomination. “Urusan gue [It’s my business],” she said it in the crude Jakartan dialect usually used in expressing anger.
Megawati is struggling between naming her daughter Puan Maharani, speaker of the House of Representatives who consistently scores low in all public opinion surveys, and Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, who tops all public figures in these surveys. Megawati obviously wants to keep it in the family. Her father Sukarno was Indonesia’s first president in 1945-1966, and she herself held the job in 2001-2004. But naming 49-year-old Puan as candidate could be a political suicide. Not only will she almost certainly lose, but PDI-P could also lose its top position, which it has enjoyed since 2014.
In the 2014 and 2019 general elections, PDI-P had Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who, in winning both presidential races, helped strengthen the party’s fortunes at the polls. The Jokowi factor will be missing in 2024 as he is constitutionally barred from running for a third term.
Opinion polls indicate however that giving the presidential ticket to Ganjar could have the same “Jokowi effect” on PDI-P’s election fortunes. And the reverse may also be true. Giving the ticket to Puan could see mass defection at the polling booths and the party would most likely forfeit its top position in 2024.
Megawati may not have disclosed her choice in her speech in Jakarta, attended by thousands of cadres, including Jokowi and Ganjar, as well as Puan, but in lavishing praises on women leaders, including the late Queen Elizabeth and Cleopatra, and by touting gender equality, she hinted that she would be going for a woman candidate.
Puan, with the help of her mother, has a few more months to improve her electability. Unless it dramatically changes however, Megawati may have to give the PDI-P ticket to Ganjar, if only to save the party.
