Despite his landslide presidential victory, president-elect Prabowo Subianto failed to clinch a clean sweep in the race for House of Representatives.

Gerindra Party won the third-highest number of votes, trailing behind its rival the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and ally the Golkar Party in first and second place, respectively.

Gerindra, Golkar and two other parties backing Prabowo – the Democratic Party and National Mandate Party (PAN) – are predicted to secure about 280 out of a total 580 seats, or less than 50 percent.

With unity for the sake of the nation in mind, Prabowo’s camp has said it is open to the idea of welcoming parties from rival camps into its ruling coalition.

A meeting between Prabowo and NasDem Party chair Surya Paloh last week, the first after the KPU announcement, has led people to think that NasDem will eventually join the ruling coalition.

There are also predictions among analysts that NasDem’s two partners in the camp of unsuccessful presidential candidate Anies Baswedan, the National Awakening Party (PKB) and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), will take up Prabowo’s offer.

But what would our democracy look like if the government went unopposed and unchallenged because all political parties were in the same coalition?

A healthy democracy needs a credible opposition which is ready to criticize the government and warn against potential abuses of power and therefore institute a functioning mechanism of checks and balances.

Indonesian politics tends to offer the comforting illusion of stability while coalition building post-election tends to be based on pragmatic politics.

The fragility of the opposition has become starkly evident in the past.

We have seen that some political parties whose candidates lost the presidential election ended up joining those in power instead of playing an opposition role in the legislature, even though they tended to have ideological differences from those in power.

This was the case during Jokowi’s second presidency.

Shortly after Prabowo’s defeat in the election against the incumbent President, Prabowo led Gerindra to join Jokowi’s ruling coalition.

This was followed by another pro-Prabowo party, PAN, in the following years, leaving the Democratic Party and the PKS the two remaining opposition parties in the legislature.

For the sake of the nation, we do not need an opposition that sows divisions or renders the work of the government ineffective without meaningful checks and balances. What we need is one that keeps the government accountable for the good of the nation.

To date, the PDI-P is the only party that has hinted at an intention to play an opposition role to the Prabowo-led government in the House – although party matriarch Megawati Soekarnoputri has remained quiet about where her party will stand.

Even the PDI-P’s only election partner the United Development Party (PPP) has signaled a possibility of realigning with Prabowo despite not being eligible to send representatives to Senayan.

The PDI-P experienced playing an opposition role during the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono presidency from 2004 to 2014.

The PDI-P stands to control the highest number of House seats, at 110 seats.

But having one opposition party might not be effective enough as a system of checks and balances, as was the case when the PDI-P was the only opposition party to Yudhoyono’s first tenure.

What we need is a credible opposition force that is an equal sparring partner of the executive so we can nourish a democratic form of government.

The PDI-P can lead the way, particularly as it stands to secure the House speaker seat, which has traditionally been given to the party with the greatest share of seats in the legislature.