Cracks have emerged in Golkar, Indonesia’s oldest political party, as it suffers a dip in popularity and internal bickering on which presidential candidate to support ahead of February’s general election.
Prominent Golkar members such as ministers Luhut Pandjaitan and Bahlil Lahadalia, who are vying to take over the chairman’s post, have sounded the alarm over the fall in popularity from 12% of public support four years ago to around six per cent currently.
They have put the blame on chairman Airlangga Hartarto.
Golkar won around 12% of the votes in the 2019 election, securing 85 seats to make it the second-largest party in Parliament behind the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which has 128 seats.
The other seven parties in Parliament share the remaining 362 seats.
Political observers suspect that President Joko Widodo had a role to play in the feud within Golkar, given Airlangga’s reluctance to support Joko’s favoured presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto, 71.
Further complicating things, Airlangga earlier in July sent senior party representatives to a large rally held by a political party that is fielding former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan, 54 – a staunch political foe of Joko – as its presidential candidate.
This political gesture in support of Anies was not received well by Joko’s inner circle.
Indonesia is likely to have a three-way presidential race on Feb 14, with the other contender being Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo, 54, who is backed by the PDI-P.
Support from Golkar for Prabowo, currently Joko’s Defence Minister, is deemed very important and could determine whether he becomes the next president.
Prabowo is so far backed by only his Gerindra party and the National Awakening party (PKB), which together control 24% of Parliament, just above the 20% threshold needed to field a presidential candidate.
The Straits Times understands there is a risk the PKB may withdraw its support and cause Prabowo to lose his ticket.
The PKB has had a track record of pulling out support at the last minute, like in 2018, ahead of the Central Java gubernatorial election when it dropped its backing for PDI-P’s Pranowo.
Observers have accused Joko of using legal pressure to weaken Airlangga. On Monday, he was summoned by the Attorney General’s office and was questioned for 12 hours over a year-old corruption case involving the illegal export of cooking oil.
Commenting on the Golkar divisions, political analyst Rocky Gerung argued that Joko needs to have control over an influential political party to stay relevant after he steps down as president.
Joko attempted to set the record straight on Thursday by saying Golkar’s ongoing feud did not involve his administration.
“That is Golkar’s internal matter. It’s nothing to do with us,” Joko said, adding that if Luhut or Bahlil wished to become Golkar chairman, that would be their personal matter as well. — The Straits Times/ANN
