JAKARTA (Yosefardi) – The Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), in its recent maneuver, has tried to collect supports to establish coalition of five Islamic parties to endorse their own president candidate towards next year’s presidential race. Unfortunately, other Islamic parties rejected those ideas.
Mardani Ali Sera, Spokesperson of PKS, said that his party hopes five Islamic parties (PKS, PAN, PKB, PPP, and PBB) can unite to face next year’s legislative and presidential elections.
He mentioned some names could be endorsed as president candidate from the coalition of Islamic parties. They are Hidayat Nur Wahid (PKS politician), Hatta Rajasa (PAN Chairman), Yusril Ihza Mahendra (PBB Chairman), Muhaimin Iskandar (PKB Chairman), Shohibul Iman (PKS politician), Abdul Malik Haramain (PKB politician), Mahfud MD (former Chief of Constitutional Court) and Dahlan Iskan (Minister of State-Owned Enterprises).
Mardani views the pair of Mahfud MD and Dahlan Iskan as the strongest pair to compete with strongest president candidates like Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo (popular Jakarta Governor and PDI-P politician) and Prabowo Subianto (retired Lieutenant General and patron leader of Gerindra Party).
In the counterparts, PAN and PPP have firmly rejected PKS’ ideas. “I didn’t see the urgency of those ideas. There’s no need to make a dichotomy between Islamic parties and nationalist,” said Suharso Monoarfa, Vice Chairman of PPP and as well as former President SBY’s cabinet member.
“It is an obsolete perspective. It is not political ideology among political parties that will produce one figure who represented them (in presidential election),” said Viva Yoga Mauladi, Head of Pan Election Victory Body.
The latest survey from the research center of Kompas newspaper, the largest newspaper in the country, showed that the electability of five Islamic parties continue to drop to less than 6%, a far away below the presidential threshold i.e. 20% of parliamentary seats or 25% of national votes, a minimum requirement for political party to be able to endorse its own president and vice president candidates.
However, based on the final results of 2009 election, those five Islamic parties actually collected a combined 25.98% votes. (haryantos@yosefardi.biz)