In this picture taken on Oct 19, 2023, Surakarta Mayor Gibran Rakabuming Raka, the son of President Joko Widodo, attends a public hearing with members of the regional council in Surakarta, Central Java. - AFP
JAKARTA (The Jakarta Post/Asia News Network): The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) has expressed its dismay at a move by its 2024 electoral rivals to pit Surakarta Mayor Gibran Rakabuming Raka, a prominent member of the party, against the PDI-P’s own nominee in the upcoming presidential race.
The party has, however, remained mum on the status of President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo’s eldest son, who says he has surrendered his fate to the PDI-P leadership.
On Sunday, Gibran was announced by the Onward Indonesia Coalition (KIM), led by the Gerindra Party, as the preferred running mate for presidential hopeful Prabowo Subianto, a self-proclaimed successor to Jokowi.
Prabowo’s camp has until just before midnight on Wednesday to seal the deal, when the registration window for candidates for the 2024 presidential election closes.
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If the duo becomes official, they will compete against the PDI-P’s pairing of former Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo and Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Mahfud MD, who signed up for the race last week.
A third pair, former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan as the presidential candidate and National Awakening Party (PKB) chairman Muhaimin Iskandar as his running mate, will also be running.
After weeks of guarded responses to rumours of Gibran jumping ship, the party aired its grievances on Monday. PDI-P senior politician Hugo Andreas Pereira said he was “very disappointed” in Gibran’s decision, saying that the First Son had acted “coldly” by siding with the party’s rivals after spending months convincing the public and party ranks that he would remain loyal to the PDI-P.
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“Has the PDI-P ever treated him unjustly? As far as I know, we have always given him special treatment. We recruited, fought for and elected him as a mayor despite his relatively short career,” Hugo said in a statement.
Separately, PDI-P secretary-general Hasto Kristiyanto told reporters that the Prabowo-Gibran announcement had only served to embolden the party’s fight against “KKN”, a popular byword for corruption, collusion and nepotism.
He called the competing ticket the “antithesis” of Ganjar and Mahfud, who he said were symbols of “lawful heroes and defenders of the ‘little people’”.
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Hasto also asserted that the party did not feel threatened by the rival ticket. “The PDI-P is the party of bulls. We thrive on pressure,” he told local media on Monday.
It remains unclear how the PDI-P will respond to the perceived betrayal and what Gibran’s future relationship to the party will be. Gibran told reporters in Surakarta that he had met with PDI-P heir apparent Puan Maharani as well as the leader of Ganjar’s campaign team, Arsjad Rasjid.
He said he was “prepared” to be sanctioned in accordance with the PDI-P’s rules. “I leave every decision to the party,” Gibran said on Monday, as quoted by Tempo.co.
Puan confirmed that she had spoken with the Surakarta mayor but did not say what steps the party would take in response to his nomination on another ticket.
The announcement of Gibran’s candidacy, after Prabowo met with the party leaders in his big-tent coalition, follows months of recurring statements by the PDI-P warning its members against jumping ship, after Gibran had a highly publicised dinner with Prabowo in late May.
The idea that the two could link up gained traction within the KIM and was enabled in practice by a Constitutional Court ruling last week that allowed 36-year-old Gibran to circumvent the 40-year-old age minimum for presidential and vice presidential candidates, given that he had held a regional leadership position.
But beyond cryptic messages about loyalty from PDI-P chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri and a few summons for Gibran, the party has yet to take any definitive action. After all, the PDI-P, which also counts Jokowi among its ranks, faces pressure to tread carefully on the matter or risk losing access and power in the cabinet, analysts say.
The party’s leadership will have to calculate with precision before making any further decisions or comments, the experts said, considering the complications that could arise. For one, Ganjar’s bid could be jeopardised if Jokowi loyalists moved en masse toward the Prabowo-Gibran ticket, splitting the PDI-P’s support base in two.
Furthermore, if Jokowi were to publicly rally against the PDI-P, the party might have to contend with a possible early exit from the cabinet.
“They need to very carefully observe how the public is reacting to this development,” said Djayadi Hanan, executive director of Lembaga Survei Indonesia (LSI). “They will need to see if people are more supportive of Gibran or the party, then respond accordingly,” he told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
The latest LSI poll, issued on Sunday, suggests that the Prabowo-Gibran pairing would lead the race with an electability score of 35.9 per cent, compared to the Ganjar-Mahfud pairing (26.1 per cent) and Anies-Muhaimin (19.6 per cent).
Over 18 per cent of respondents did not respond to the question or were undecided. Still, other analysts have warned that picking Jokowi’s son would be a “huge political gamble”, as accusations of dynastic politics and a power-hungry Gibran have become more widespread following last week’s court ruling.
The PDI-P could still benefit if the tide turns and it plays its cards well, said Adi Prayitno, a political analyst at the Hidayatullah State Islamic University.
“[The PDI-P’s silence] may be part of a political communications strategy to signal that it had never abandoned Gibran or Jokowi but was itself abandoned,” Adi told the Post on Monday.
“It seems like the PDI-P is seeking public sympathy and putting itself in the shoes of the oppressed. That’s something that may actually do well with our voters.”
