Budiman was stripped of his party membership in an official letter signed by PDI-P chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri and secretary-general Hasto Kristiyanto on Thursday.

Komarudin Watubun, head of the PDI-P ethics board, confirmed the decision on Friday. He said the PDI-P leadership had acted on the recommendations of the ethics board, which found that Budiman had violated the party’s disciplinary code.

“When a member expresses support for a candidate other than the one announced by the PDI-P chairwoman, who the world clearly knows is Ganjar Pranowo”, that member has “committed an offense”, Komarudin said.

Megawati publicly announced the Central Java governor as her party’s presidential pick on April 21, just ahead of the long Idul Fitri weekend.

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Budiman’s PDI-P membership was thrown into question after his surprising move last week to publicly declare his support for Prabowo, the incumbent defense minister and Gerindra Party chair.

He also launched the Prabowo-Budiman (Prabu) group for supporters of the former general’s presidential bid in Semarang, a city in Ganjar’s provincial governorship.

Budiman staged his declaration of support a month after visiting Prabowo’s private residence in Jakarta. After the meeting, he hinted at his support for Prabowo, lauding him as the kind of leader the country needed now.

Known for his activism in the student-led democracy movements that emerged in the late 1980s, Budiman’s relationship with the ruling party appeared to sour in recent weeks, with some PDI-P executives accusing Budiman of putting his personal ambitions ahead of the party’s when he allegedly demanded a seat in President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s cabinet.

The party’s ethics head Komarudin claimed that during an informal meeting with Hasto on July 24, “Budiman asked to become a minister, even if it was only for three months. The secretary-general rejected the request”, which Budiman has denied.

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After the wayward party member declared his support for Prabowo, Hasto asserted that the PDI-P would not tolerate such “undisciplined action” and recommended that any offenders should either resign or be expelled.

On Monday, the PDI-P ethics board convened in Jakarta to hash out the situation.

Megawati addressed the controversy surrounding Budiman for the first time on Tuesday, when she called on her party’s rank and file to be vigilant and not be provoked by defectors.

“Stay silent, keep working,” she said. “Go to the grass roots and meet the people, because there is no other way” to win.

Budiman said he accepted the decision of the party leadership to expel him, adding that his loyalty to the PDI-P ideology was unchanged, even after he was sacked.

“This is the end of a [chapter] in my life and the start of the next,” he said on Friday. “It’s part of my journey as a man [who has been] in politics since I was a teenager. I flow with time and history, seeking new challenges.”

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Budiman once headed the People’s Democratic Party (PRD), a leftist party that played an important role alongside the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), the PDI-P’s precursor led by Megawati, in opposing then-authoritarian ruler Soeharto.

He and nine other PRD members were detained, tried and convicted under Soeharto’s New Order government for inciting the July 27, 1996 riots, during which five people were killed and hundreds were injured.

The riots ensued after government-backed PDI leader Suryadi and his supporters attacked the party’s headquarters in Central Jakarta, where pro-Megawati supporters had taken their stand. The internal schism eventually led to the establishment of the PDI-P under Megawati in October 1998, five months after Soeharto stepped down in May.

Budiman became a PDI-P member in 2004, and was elected in 2009 and 2014 to the House of Representatives as a PDI-P lawmaker representing an electoral district in Central Java. He lost his reelection bid in 2019, when he ran as a legislative candidate of an East Java district.