Indonesia’s 2024 elections: Party elite interest versus mass popularity

Indonesia's major political parties have started jostling for position for the 2024 elections, where, as Burhanuddin Muhtadi writes, party incumbency may be forced to give way to the people's demands for the most popular choice.

Indonesia’s General Elections Commission (KPU) officially registered political parties interested in contesting in the 2024 general elections (GE) from 1 to 14 August 2022. Even though the elections are about 18 months away, early manoeuvring has begun among the key parties jostling for the presidential election (PE).

The most conspicuous alliance to emerge so far is that of Gerindra Chairman Prabowo Subianto and National Awakening Party (PKB) Chairman Muhaimin Iskandar. Their tandem registration with the KPU on 8 August and joint press conference, where Prabowo expressed his readiness to run for the third time as president while Muhaimin showed his enthusiasm to be Prabowo’s running mate, clearly threw down the gauntlet to the other parties.

This proposed Prabowo-Muhaimin ticket confirms the aspirational zeitgeist among party elites to ensure that their party’s nominations for the presidential and vice-presidential tickets in 2024 will almost exclusively go to party chairpersons or senior party cadres. The party leaders in the United Indonesia Coalition (KIB) have expressed similar attitudes. Golkar Chairman Airlangga Hartarto, National Mandate Party (PAN) Chairman Zulkifli Hasan, and United Development Party (PPP) Chairman Suharso Monoarfa jointly registered with the KPU on 10 August. Although the KIB have not determined their PE nominees, they have stated on several occasions that they will prioritise the chairpersons of the KIB parties. Airlangga could benefit the most because Golkar currently has the most seats in the parliament and traditionally pulls in more votes than either PPP or PAN.

Developments within the Democratic Party of Indonesia-Struggle (PDI-P) will bear watching, given that it is the largest party by parliamentary representation and the only one that can nominate PE candidates on its own. At PDI-P’s National Assembly Meeting in June, Chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri seemed to signal support for her daughter Puan Maharani rather than Ganjar Pranowo to be the party’s PE nominee, even though Puan is trailing far behind Ganjar in popularity polls. Megawati strongly rebuked cadres who leveraged their position in ‘two camps’ (inside and outside the party) and even threatened to expel cadres who tried to do so.

Megawati pointedly asked Ganjar to read out the recommendations of the National Meeting, one of which was that the nomination of the presidential candidate was the prerogative of PDI-P’s Chairperson. Megawati has asked Puan to represent PDI-P to explore forming a possible coalition with other party elites. Many speculate that Ganjar’s chances of getting PDI-P’s nomination as a presidential candidate might be fading.

It is possible that at this early stage, Megawati is floating a test balloon. Even though Joko Widodo (Jokowi) was in a similar position as Ganjar back in 2014 and perhaps even more of a political unknown, Megawati and her party were pragmatic enough to recognise that an overwhelmingly popular presidential candidate is not an asset to be wilfully discarded, no matter how junior his status is within the party.

Of the nine parties that currently have seats in the DPR, only NasDem has strongly signalled that non-party figures could be its nominees for PE 2024. At NasDem’s National Assembly Meeting, Chairman Surya Paloh announced that three prominent figures had been proposed as possible presidential candidates, namely Anies Baswedan, the current Governor of Jakarta and Andika Perkasa, the Commander of the Indonesian Armed Forces, both non-party figures, and Ganjar, a PDI-P ordinary cadre.

However, NasDem cannot nominate a presidential candidate on its own. Its vote-share falls far short of the required 20% of parliamentary seats (or 25% of total votes) that Indonesia’s stringent electoral rules stipulate. Anies, Ganjar and Andika could all scramble in the coming months for a stronger party or coalition to back them up, unless Nasdem succeeds in joining two or more parties to reach the threshold for nomination. This explains why party leaders enjoy a distinct advantage over non-party figures in the race to secure PE nominations.

In private, party leaders have lamented that their parties’ presidential candidate selection has been influenced disproportionately by polling numbers which focus mainly on popularity. In the party elites’ view, it is the party that has the constitutional right to nominate the presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Many elites also believe that if they are their party’s PE candidate, their party will then be able to ride on their coattails to gain more votes during the GE.

If the party elites manage to freeze out the current frontrunners in the popular polls (except for Prabowo, who is still leading most polls) in 2024’s PE, this could mark a shifting zeitgeist in Indonesian politics. Jokowi was an ordinary PDI-P cadre who, against the odds, became his party’s presidential candidate in 2014. Even Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), who was a leader of the Democratic Party but not its chairman in the 2004 PE, was swept into power because of his popularity with the voters. Both SBY and Jokowi defeated the chairpersons of major parties, which showed how mass popularity was a key factor in previous elections.