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Three new parties to join 2024 race: KPU
The General Elections Commission (KPU) has named three newcomer parties eligible to contest the 2024 legislative election amid reports that some commission staff members were pressured to falsify results.
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Yerica Lai
The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
The General Elections Commission (KPU) has named three newcomer parties eligible to contest the 2024 legislative election amid reports that some commission staff members were pressured to falsify results.
The three new parties, mostly establishment breakaways, are the Indonesian People's Wave Party (Gelora), the Nusantara Awakening Party (PKN) and the Labor Party. They had passed the so-called factual assessment, KPU commissioner Hasyim Asy’ari said on Tuesday.
They will compete in the upcoming election with nine parties in the House of Representatives and five other parties that participated in the 2019 legislative election but failed to secure enough votes to send representatives to the House. This will make a total of 17 parties contesting the election, which is more than the 14 parties that participated in the 2019 general election.
“Elections are an arena to seize and maintain power […] where those who are already in power seek to remain in power, and those who don't have power look to seize power," Hasyim said in his closing speech.
The KPU’s announcement came after civil society groups, which have set up a hotline for the public to report concerns about infringements, said that a number of regional KPU officials had claimed that they were pressured by officials from the KPU’s central office in Jakarta to pass several newcomers that had actually not met the requirements.
Lawyers representing some of the regional KPU officials demanded that the commission stop any attempts to manipulate the results of the so-called factual verification process and threatened to take legal action. The alleged parties in question are Gelora and the PKN, as well as the Garuda Party, which participated in the 2019 legislative election but is not currently represented in the legislature.
The KPU said that it had instructed regional offices to follow procedures in assessing whether political parties met requirements at the regional level, while the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) reportedly has so far found no evidence of meddling from the central KPU office.
Tempo newspaper had reported that Gelora, founded by former Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) politicians Anis Matta and Fahri Hamzah following a party split, was allegedly being passed as part of a strategy to chip away at support for the opposition PKS, the seventh-largest party in terms of House seats.
Similarly with the PKN, which was formed by loyalists of Anas Urbaningrum, a former leader of another opposition party, the Democratic Party, who was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2014 for his role in the notorious Hambalang graft case. The PKN was allegedly given the green light in hopes that it could woo Democratic Party voters, as reported by Tempo.
Both opposition parties, the PKS and Democratic Party have been in intensive coalition talks with the NasDem Party, the fourth-largest party in the pro-government coalition, which has nominated former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan in the 2024 presidential race.
Garuda, meanwhile, has actively challenged a number of articles in the General Elections Law at the Constitutional Court, including one that requires ministers or ministerial-level officials to quit if they wish to run for election. The court has ruled that they now only need the President’s permission to take leave during the campaign season.
The KPU's Tuesday announcement left the Ummat Party as the only newcomer that failed to pass the last step of the administrative assessment to contest the 2024 legislative election. Party chairman Amien Rais, a staunch critic of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration, has accused the commission of preventing his party from joining the race.
Political researcher Firman Noor said the newcomers were unlikely to add new color or fresh ideas to the political landscape as most of them were breakaway factions of existing established parties, adding that they would try to take niche voter bases from major parties.
"Reliance on oligarchs is likely to remain strong, pragmatic approaches will be prioritized," he said. "The fate of splinter parties is ultimately determined by financial capacity or whether donors will fund them."
