Golkar Plays Down Gerindra Coalition Deal

Golkar Party officials have played down public speculation that party chairman Aburizal Bakrie has sealed a deal to run as vice president to Prabowo Subianto, the founder of the Great Indonesia Movement, although some have also expressed support for the potential coalition.

“As of today, Aburizal is still a presidential candidate, just as has been mandated during the national leaders meeting. Should there be any changes in position or in the person, it should also be decided at subsequent meetings,” Golkar spokesman Tantowi Yahya said in Jakarta on Tuesday.

“The [next] national leader’s meeting is planned for May 12 or 13 in Jakarta. We don’t know where it will take place.”

Support for Aburizal’s vice presidential bid has been growing within the party by both members and officials at the central executive board, Tantowi said, adding that it was a rational move considering there was a large gap of electability between the two political icons.

Aburizal himself has also on several occasions said that the vice presidential and presidential seats were merely instruments used in governance.

“What’s most important is how we can achieve our goals in improving the people’s welfare,” Tantowi said.

Among those in support of Aburizal was Golkar deputy chairman Fadel Muhammad, who agreed that his chairman should be set as Prabowo’s vice presidential candidate.

“I support this and have no problem if Aburizal were to become Prabowo’s vice president,” Fadel said in Jakarta on Monday. “Let’s just be realistic. Even though Golkar’s votes were high [in the legislative elections], Prabowo’s popularity and electability remains much higher than Aburizal’s. So it shouldn’t be a problem if Aburizal were to become Prabowo’s vice president.”

“For Golkar, what’s most important is to be in the ruling government. Golkar wants to build a better nation,” he added.

Golkar central executive board chairman Ade Komarudin also voiced a similar sentiment.

“I would accept it if Aburizal were to be nominated as vice president, for the sake of victory,” he said on Monday, as quoted by Merdeka.com.

“Once again, our principle is to be all out. In serving [the people], we need to play a positive role, be it as vice president or as president. What’s most important is to give it our all.”

Separately, Golkar Party secretary general Idrus Marham has confirmed that future communications between his party and Gerindra will be focused on strengthening each party’s positions ahead of the July 9 presidential elections.

Idrus declined to comment on reports that Aburizal had accepted Prabowo’s offer to become vice president.

“The chairman has conducted talks and more talks will also be held in the future. It is hoped that the desired results will take shape. What’s certain is that discussions in coalition and running mates will be discussed at the meeting,” Idrus said on Monday evening.

Yorys Raweyai, chairman of Golkar’s Youth Group (AMPG), said he would soon form a team to follow up the supposed agreement between Gerindra and Golkar, dedicated to analyzing the pair’s potential. “It still needs to be sharpened. We will take steps soon to discuss the partnership,” Yorys said.

Political analyst Arya Fernandes said if formed, Prabowo and Aburizal’s coalition would be a strategic team, as both politicians had extensive experience in state organizations and businesses.

“I think the meeting between Golkar and Gerindra will affect the movements of other secondary parties.

“For the Indonesia Democratic Party of Struggle and [their presidential candidate] Joko Widodo this meeting may come as a surprise, considering Joko’s declining electability as reflected in the Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting [SRMC] survey released last week,” he said.

In a survey published by SMRC on Sunday, Joko’s electability is shown to have fluctuated, falling to 39 percent in February from 51 percent in December, before going back up to 52 percent in March and declining to 47 percent after the April 9 legislative elections.

Prabowo, on the other hand, saw stable growth in electability, from 22 percent in December to 32 percent in April.

Despite the unstable electability, however, SMRC’s findings showed that if Indonesia were to hold its presidential elections today, Joko would be the winning party over Prabowo, regardless of with whom he is paired.

When hypothetically paired with former Indonesian vice president Jusuf Kalla, Joko is said to have polled at 52.4 percent, while Prabowo earned 32.4 percent. Paired with Dahlan Iskan, Joko’s haul stood at 52 percent, while Prabowo’s stood at 32.8 percent.

“Such simulations are sensitive because the political map can change at any time. But this data clearly shows that whoever Joko is paired with — he would win,” Polcomm Institute director Heri Budianto said. “However, it needs to be noted, especially for Prabowo, that even without being paired with anyone his electability remains high.”

Heri remains confident that if the presidential elections should see only three presidential candidates in July, Joko would win the elections within only one round.

For Paramadina University political analyst Herdi Sahrasad, despite having a strong political vehicle, Aburizal’s track record could play a big role in turning people away towards other candidates.

“Lapindo and Aburizal’s leaked trip to the Maldives don’t look good. Should Aburizal become Prabowo’s vice president there are several negative factors that would burden Prabowo in facing Joko,” Herdi said, as quoted by Inilah.com, referring to a leaked video that went viral in March that showed Aburizal going on a trip to the Maldives with a lawmaker and two actresses.

 

Indonesia Exports Pick Up as Economy Returns to Firmer Footing

JAKARTA—Indonesia’s economy posted a $1.07 billion trade surplus in the first quarter, as exports picked up in March on the back of a weaker currency and imports continued to contract.

Inflation also moderated, with consumer prices growing 7.25% on year in April. Monthly price growth regularly came in above 8% last year after the government raised fuel prices, but the effects of that hike have begun to wane.

 

Taken together, the data shows that Indonesia is winning a battle to restore foreign investor confidence in its economy. The rupiah was among the world’s worst performing currencies last year, dropping 21% against the U.S. dollar, as the country’s large current-account deficit led to big capital outflows.

Foreign investors got cold feet over the economy, believing it was living beyond its means by importing too many consumer goods and relying on foreign financing to fuel a growth in credit. At the same time, exports of commodities to China—Indonesia’s major trade partner—cooled as China’s growth slowed.

Indonesia’s central bank responded with a series of interest rate increases totaling 1.75 percentage points between June and November that have pushed economic growth rates below 6%. The tighter monetary policy has choked off imports. Exports have begun to recover due to a weaker local currency and still robust demand from China for commodities.

The trade surplus in the first quarter compares with a deficit of $234 million in the first quarter of 2013. The figure was above expectations as the rupiah gained over 7% against the dollar in the first quarter as investors began to regain confidence in the country’s economic management.

Exports rose 1.2% on year in March. Imports in the month fell 2.3%, leaving a trade surplus of $673 million, above economists’ expectations of $520 million. A boost in palm oil exports and improving shipments of manufactured goods helped counter a drag from oil and gas sales. A ban on some unprocessed commodity exports, especially nickel, was another negative.

Hak Bin Chua, an economist at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, estimated the current-account deficit, which measures trade and one-time transfers, stood at 1.8% of gross domestic product in the first quarter versus 2% in the final three months of 2014.

Indonesia’s statistics office also announced inflation continued trending down to 7.25% in April from 7.32% in March as harvest season helped boost food supply. The downtrend will likely continue with many analysts forecasting inflation of around 5% by the end of the year as the impact of last year’s fuel price increase wears off.

The “gradual moderation in inflation will continue to offer comfort to Bank Indonesia,” Barclays analysts Wai Ho Leong and Bill Diviney said in a note. The rate hikes last year have led to higher lending rates, crimping bank credit and damping local demand, they said.

Bank Indonesia Governor Agus Martowardojo has indicated the bank will remain hawkish for some time. Barclays expects the bank to start easing monetary policy in the first half of next year.

The bank’s efforts to restore stability, and moderating inflation, mean the rupiah should continue to appreciate this year, some analysts say. The currency lost around 2% against the dollar in April, after strength in the first quarter.

ING economist Tim Condon believes the central bank intervened last month to weaken the currency, in an attempt to further narrow the current-account deficit. ING still expects the currency to appreciate to 10,800 to the dollar by year-end versus around 11,500 now.

 

Parties opt to pragmatism in coalition: observer

ANTARA News: A political observer has predicted that political parties will base their considerations on pragmatism and realistic support rather than on ideology in forming a coalition.

“Pragmatism will become the basis of political parties consideration in forming a coalition after the unofficial results of quick counts on last Wednesdays legislative election map out their vote gains,” Political Observer Dr Syarief Makhya MP of the University of Lampung, said here on Sunday.

He said that the result of the quick counts indicated that only the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) could nominate its own presidential candidate.

It can nominate its presidential candidate if the 19 percent votes it gained in the legislative elections could earn it at least 116 seats of the 560 seats in the House of Representatives (DPR).

“If the votes it has gained in the legislative elections could not be converted into a minimum presidential threshold of 20 percent seats, PDIP will be required to set up a coalition with other political parties,” Syarief Makhya said.

He predicted that there were three presidential candidates who would form a coalition before they could run for the presidential race next July 9, 2014.

The three presidential candidates are popular Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo, better known as Jokowi, of the PDIP, Prabowo Subianto of the Great Indonesia Movement (Gerindra) and Aburizal Bakri, who is intimately called Ical, of the Golkar Party.

Syarief said the formation of the coalitions inclined to be based on rational considerations, namely the potential of real supports and pragmatism rather than on ideology.

Indonesia Election 2014: ‘Prabowo effect’ gives Gerindra big gains

Gerindra Party of former general Prabowo Subianto was the biggest gainer in Wednesday’s general election.

AsiaOne: It may have finished in third place, but the Gerindra Party of former general Prabowo Subianto was the biggest gainer in Wednesday’s general election on the back of what party leaders and observers called the “Prabowo effect”.

As Gerindra secretary-general Ahmad Muzani put it: “People want a strong, heroic figure and they like Pak Prabowo’s image.”

Preliminary counts showed the six-year-old party nearly tripled its vote share from 4.5 per cent in 2009 to at least 12 per cent, exceeding some pollsters’ predictions.

But senior party officials hope that official results, which will be made known early next month, will be even better.

Many say Mr Prabowo’s clear vision and leadership qualities appeal to a segment of Indonesians, thus contributing to the party’s strong performance.

Gerindra’s branding of the former military man as presidential material, which began several years ago, also boosted the party’s fortunes.

“Gerindra was really set up to propel Mr Prabowo for the 2014 presidential election,” said political analyst Paul Rowland.

Agreeing, deputy party chairman Fadli Zon said Gerindra has been expanding and recruiting aggressively in the past few years, as well as strengthening its structure and grassroots to position itself as a reformist party with Mr Prabowo its candidate for president. “We are consistent in the policy goals we want to push. We have declared our vision in a six- point action plan announced last year, ahead of other parties,” he told The Straits Times.

Some voters unhappy with incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono – also a former general, but criticised for slow decision-making – have switched allegiance to Mr Prabowo, who they feel is firm and decisive.

Nevertheless, during election campaigning, Mr Prabowo had to defend himself against charges of human rights abuses during his time in the military. He brushed these off as unproven and the issue looks to have failed to gain traction among voters.

Some of the voters who have gravitated towards Gerindra were supporters of Dr Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party before it got tainted by graft, or those disgruntled with former ruling parties such as Golkar and the Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle.

One of the people Gerindra has reached out to as a possible vice- presidential ticket for the election in July is anti-graft commission chief Abraham Samad, who can help burnish its clean credentials.

Still, it is a long road to the presidency, as Mr Prabowo himself acknowledged when he told party cadres on Wednesday night:

“The fight has only begun.”

Gerindra communicating with four parties about coalition

Prabowo Subianto, the next Indonesian president candidate from Gerindra Party. Gerindra took third place in legislative election several days ago, behind PDI P and Golkar Party.

ANTARA News: The Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), one of the winners in the recent legislative elections, has begun discussions with four parties prior to the presidential election on July 9, a party official said.

“The political communications has advanced significantly and produced agreements. We have been communicating with, among others, the United Development Party (PPP), the National Mandate Party (PAN), and the Nation Awakening Party (PKB),” Ahmad Muzani, the secretary general of Gerindra, said at the Gerindra office here on Saturday.

“We have also communicated with the Democrat Party, and it also went well,” he added.

Gerindras chief patron, Prabowo Subianto, who is also the party’s presidential candidate, has said that the coalition decision would only be made after the results of the April 9 vote count were known.

Regarding the vice presidential candidate, Prabowo said that Gerindra is in discussions with all sides, but had not determined who the candidate would be.

“Let us see the results, and based on them we will later communicate with all sides with regard to finding the best candidate,” he said at a polling station in Bojong Koneng village in Bogor, West Java.

Indonesia’s Elections: The Chosen One Stumbles

Ground troops in a monumental exercise

The Economist: The world’s third-largest democracy went to the polls on April 9th in parliamentary and local elections. A public holiday was declared to encourage 190m-odd people to cast their votes at 545,000 polling stations for over 235,000 candidates contesting 20,000 or so elected posts. The official results of this monumental exercise will not be known until early next month. But based on past experience, exit polls published the same afternoon have probably given a fairly accurate picture of the outcome.

While much went as predicted, the big surprise was the relatively poor showing of the main opposition party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, or PDI-P. It was widely expected to get a significant boost from the popularity of its recently declared presidential candidate, Joko Widodo, widely known as Jokowi, the governor of the capital, Jakarta. Party managers were hoping the PDI-P would get 25-30% of the popular vote, but the exit polls suggest it will have to settle for 19%.

The result will undoubtedly make life more difficult for Jokowi in the presidential election on July 9th. Under Indonesia’s complex electoral rules, a party needs at least 25% of the popular vote in these parliamentary elections—or 20% of the seats—to be able to nominate its own candidate for the presidential race. Thus the PDI-P appears already to have fallen well short of the popular threshold, and may also fall short in parliamentary seats. If so, it will have to enter into a coalition with one or more parties.

Such is Jokowi’s extraordinary popularity that his own candidacy seems assured. And the PDI-P might anyway have formed some sort of coalition even had it done astoundingly well on April 9th. But the PDI-P’s underwhelming performance gives Jokowi and the party leader, Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of the country’s founding president and a former president herself, a weaker hand when it comes to picking the vice-presidential candidate and other senior posts in a new government. Ms Megawati was obliged to choose Jokowi as the party’s presidential candidate because of his obvious popularity, despite presidential ambitions of her own. Now both will have to fight a bit harder for the government that they want.

The other main parties, all broadly secular and nationalist, trailed not far behind the PDI-P. Golkar, the political vehicle of the late Suharto and now led by an oligarch and presidential hopeful, Aburizal Bakrie, won about 12% of the vote, while Gerindra, headed by a former special-forces commander, Prabowo Subianto, won about 11.5%. The big loser was the Democrat Party of the outgoing president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Having won 21% of the vote at the last election in 2009, its share dropped to just 9%, a poor fourth.

Voters were punishing the Democrats for a series of high-profile corruption cases involving the party’s senior officials. But the showing also reflects a feeling of disillusion with the two-term president, who promised much but failed to deal with rampant corruption, lousy infrastructure and much else. The fate of the Democrat Party in the parliamentary polls is a warning to the next president of what voters now expect of him, whether or not it turns out to be Jokowi.

Some of the smaller Islamic parties in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation did better than expected. Now even more parties will sit in parliament than before, making it still more fractious. Some parties will look to flex their new muscle, compounding the challenges facing any government trying to force modernising measures through the legislature. Added to Jokowi’s new need for coalition partners, the complex business of governing this highly decentralised, untidy and combative democracy has probably just got that much harder.

In Indonesian Election Aftermath, a Few Lessons on the Jokowi Effect

Presidential candidate and Jakarta governor Joko Widodo talks to his supporters during Indonesian Democratic Party’s (PDI-P) campaign in Cilegon, Banten province, on March 28. Reuters

Wall Street Journal: The buzz out of Indonesia’s recent legislative elections has largely been about Jakarta Gov. Joko Widodo and the boost he failed to provide to the party supporting him for president, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, or PDI-P.

Pre-election surveys showed a spike in support for PDI-P after it announced its backing for the popular governor, known as Jokowi. Some analysts predicted that the party would win as much as 30% of the overall vote Wednesday, which would have been a phenomenal boost from 14% in the last elections five years ago.

Preliminary quick counts instead showed a less-stunning 19%, leading to a raft of commentary about how the party fumbled – and what the lower-than-expected support means for the so-called Jokowi phenomenon.

The 52-year-old governor’s appeal is his man-of-the people touch in getting out on the streets and taking a hands-on approach to problems. Critics say that he hasn’t managed to achieve much in his year-and-a-half as governor and it’s too early to declare him a national leader.

But before dismissing him in the presidential vote in July, analysts urge some words of caution:

It’s about the people, not the party: “Voters are not loyal to the political party, they vote for the person they want irrespective of the political party,” said Sandra Hamid, Indonesia head of the Asia Foundation, a non-governmental organization that studied voter knowledge and practices. “We can’t read this [outcome] as though Jokowi will get fewer votes than expected in the presidential election. It depends on whether or not he remains the Jokowi that people have liked all this time.”

Candidates only care about themselves: The open party list voting system in legislative elections has led to what Edward Aspinall, a professor of politics at Australian National University, calls “ground war style campaigns run by individual candidates.” In a recent blog, Mr. Aspinall explains that under an open party list, voters select a candidate within a party from among up to a dozen others. That type of selection has led to a style of campaigning where candidates promote themselves rather than their parties, meaning Wednesday’s vote “is not simply a product of voters’ views on national issues, or even their preference for individual parties or presidential [candidates].” Conclusion: legislative elections aren’t much of a reflection on who people will vote for the president.

PDI-P still came out on top: That the party won less of the vote than it had hoped for shows that Mr. Widodo “is not invincible,” said Yohanes Sulaiman, a lecturer at Indonesia National Defense University. “Fair or not, Jokowi and the PDI-P’s inability to live up to the hype has resulted in damage to the Jokowi brand,” he writes in a recent blog. But, he says, PDI-P may have done even worse without Jokowi.

“This 19% is not fantastic for Jokowi however you look at it,” said Ms. Hamid. “For people who have entered PDI-P who are not supportive of Jokowi, this is the chance to say the whole Jokowi effect is not huge.”

Even if he becomes president, the parliamentary showing could weaken Mr. Widodo’s hand in working with a future governing coalition in the legislature where his party is not in a dominant position, a problem faced by the outgoing president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

“I think what voters really want is a changed way of governing,” said Ms. Hamid. “This whole thing of huge coalitions and not being able to decipher who’s governing … that has gotten old. People want something different and they expect something different from Jokowi. So this 19% is going to be very problematic for Jokowi. How is he going to deliver? It’s not going to be easy for him.”

Why Indonesia’s parliamentary elections matter

CNBC: Indonesians are headed to the polls Wednesday to choose a new parliament, with the outcome set to determine the course of the country’s reforms and whether the market’s recovery continues.

The elections “come at a crucial time, with the economy stuttering and confidence in the current leadership at a low ebb,” said Capital Economics in a note Monday. “The parliamentary elections still matter in terms of the eventual president’s ability to guide policy.”

The country’s around 186 million voters will be choosing 560 members of parliament from among around 6,600 candidates representing 12 political parties. Only parties getting at least 25 percent of the popular vote or 20 percent of the seats in parliament will be able to field a presidential candidate in the July presidential election.

“If its outcome suggests higher potential of a one-round July presidential election, this would be market positive,” CIMB said in a note Friday.

The current governor of Jakarta, Joko Widodo, widely known as Jokowi, is believed to be the presidential favorite, rising to the top of opinion polls. He is seen as a reformist and a clean politician who has not used his governorship for personal enrichment.

“Jokowi is certainly a very, very good figure to calm the markets,” Edward Lee, regional head of research at Standard Chartered, told CNBC.

Expectations that a new government will be able to push through reforms has helped Indonesia’s market become one of the region’s best performing this year after it was hard-hit in last year’s emerging market selloff in the wake of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s move to begin tapering its asset purchases.

Indonesia’s central bank has hiked rates five times since the middle of last year to prop up a crumbling currency, which dropped 26 percent last year.

While the economy, the biggest in Southeast Asia, grew a better-than-expected 5.72 percent on year in the fourth quarter, economists say political uncertainty, the impact of monetary tightening and a controversial mineral export ban will all be headwinds in the coming months.

Other analysts are also positive on Jokowi’s candidacy.

“As governor of Jakarta, he’s proved his mettle in terms of one, not being corrupt (and) number two, being able to deal with the issues that matter to the people,” Amarjit Singh, senior analyst at IHS, told CNBC.

Stamping out, or at least minimizing, corruption is likely the biggest issue for the election. Transparency International scores the country at 32 out of 100 on its corruption perception index, with 0 signaling highly corrupt and 100 as very clean, which gives it a ranking of 114 out of 177 countries.

Other issues include job security and wages as well as inflation and infrastructure development.

If Jokowi’s party, the opposition Eh – PDI-P or the Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle led by former President Megawati Sukarnoputri, doesn’t garner enough votes in this election, he may need to form a coalition with another party. This may cost him the ability to choose his running mate and limit his ability to push needed reforms.

However, Singh noted that Jokowi as well as the other candidates have yet to announce economic platforms.

“At this stage, everybody is running on personalities and hoping that the personality behind the party can carry the party forward,” he said.

Among other popular parties, the Greater Indonesia Movement Party, or Gerindra, is led by Prabowo Subianto, a former special-forces commander, who may also throw his hat in the presidential ring.

Another potential candidate is businessman Aburizal Bakrie from Golkar, the party of former strongman Suharto.

The Democratic Party of current President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has been falling behind in the polls. It plans to hold a convention to choose its presidential candidate. Harvard-educated former trade minister Gita Wirjawan has said he will participate in the convention.

Why a Vote in Aceh Matters for Indonesia

Great Indonesian Movement Party (Gerindra) supporters attended the party’s campaign rally in Banda Aceh on April 1. European Pressphoto Agency

Wall Street Journal – JAKARTA, Indonesia–Indonesia’s Aceh province has seen a spate of violence in the run-up to nationwide legislative elections on April 9. The area in north Sumatra was once the scene of a decades-long separatist conflict and only achieved peace in 2005, after the two sides were brought together following the devastation wrought by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Some security analysts say the violence–marked by shootings, vandalism and assault–indicates the depth of rivalry between the different rebel factions that once fought for independence against Indonesian troops and are now vying for control of the resource-rich province.

A recent report from the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict looks at Aceh’s elections and outlines various scenarios based on their outcome.

While the provincial vote doesn’t count for much at the national level, it will have deeper implications for the way Indonesia’s democracy shapes up down the road and could provide an image boost to presidential contender Prabowo Subianto, it says.

Aceh earned special autonomy as part of the 2005 peace deal, making it the only province in the country that allows local parties to form and run in elections. One of those parties is Partai Aceh, which is controlled by past leaders of the Free Aceh Movement, a rebel group that fought government forces for decades in an attempt to achieve independence.

The party is largely credited with having brought peace to the long-fraught area and controls the lion’s share of power in the local parliament.

The party’s main rival, Partai Nasional Aceh, is attempting to secure enough seats in the provincial parliament to form a bloc that would allow it to put a check on Partai Aceh’s powers, something the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict calls the “best” outcome but also “the least likely, since it has neither the machine nor the resources to get out the vote.”

Sidney Jones, the institute’s director, says a sweeping win for Partai Aceh would indicate “how much the peace agreement and the advent of local parties has solidified control of a group that is virtually unshakeable from its position.”

Its grip on the province has made national leaders reluctant to challenge it, she says, despite concerns about a lack of accountability and recent problematic legislation. In early February, for example, the provincial government approved a bylaw that requires everyone in the province to follow Islamic law regardless of religion. The province is the only one in Indonesia that applies strict Islamic or Sharia law, but until the latest bylaw was passed that only applied to Muslims.

The question now is whether a strong show of support for Partai Aceh in this election would make a new government similarly unwilling to challenge it, Ms. Jones says.

Much of that depends on how the presidential elections later this year pan out. If Partai Aceh wins big, it would help Mr. Subianto and his Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), which formed an unlikely alliance with Partai Aceh last year.

While local parties cannot field candidates for national office, they can ally with national parties to win seats in the national House of Representatives. In the last election, Partai Aceh teamed up with current President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democrat Party.

The Gerindra-Partai Aceh pairing has struck many as strange since Mr. Subianto is the former son-in-law of past president Suharto and an ex-military commander. That means “someone who could be seen to be a military representative is also allied with the former guerillas,” says Ms. Jones.

The alliance could help Gerindra win a few seats in the House, which would boost Mr. Subianto’s chances of contesting the presidency, since his party needs to win at least 20% of the overall vote to put his name on the presidential ballot. But what’s more important, analysts say, is what a win in Aceh could do for his image and electability.

“What happens in Aceh will say volumes about what is going on in Indonesia,” Shane Barter, a professor of comparative politics at Soka University in California, said in an email. “If Aceh can be brought into Prabowo’s network, then anywhere can.”

Scholars, intellectuals endorse Prabowo’s bid

Pupils of Telaga Biru state elementary school in Gorontalo, northern Sulawesi, get ready to go home unusually early on Wednesday because a field in front of their school is being used for a campaign event. The Election Law forbids political campaigning at locations such as schools, places of worship or hospitals. (Antara/Adiwinata Solihin)

The Jakarta Globe – A group of university professors and intellectuals announced on Wednesday its collective endorsement of Gerindra Party presidential candidate and chief patron Prabowo Subianto, giving the retired army general another moral boost ahead of the upcoming presidential election.

Former Bandung-based Padjadjaran University rector Yuyun Wirasasmita, who read the group’s endorsement during a gathering in which Prabowo and Gerindra officials were in attendance, claimed the group represented 300 professors and intellectuals from all over the country who considered Prabowo to be the most suitable person to take on the country’s complicated social and economic problems.

“Despite its abundant resources, Indonesia has failed to become what it should be: a developed country […] We know the facts and we can’t be fooled. We have found a leader that can transform Indonesia into a strong nation in the future,” Yuyun said, referring to Prabowo.

Among the scholars and intellectuals that attended Wednesday’s gathering were former Golkar Party lawmaker and Indonesian Muslim Scholar Association (ICMI) presidium board member Marwah Daud Ibrahim; Jakarta-based Dr. Hamka Muhammadiyah University (Uhamka) rector Suyatno; Jakarta-based Pancasila University’s (UP) engineering professor Antonius Anton; and Mahmud Hamundu, former rector of the Haluoleo University in Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi.

UP’s school of communication dean Andi Faisal Bakti, who organized the gathering, however, said the group had only accommodated the political views from emeritus professors or non-civil servant professors to avoid conflicts of interest.

“I, however, believe there would be more support for Pak Prabowo if we include [professors] who are classified as civil servants,” Andi said.

The 2014 law on state civil apparatus prohibits civil servants from becoming a member of any political party. According to the Education and Culture Ministry, as of 2010 Indonesia had 4,717 professors out of a total of 197,922 university educators in 83 state universities and over 3,000 private institutions.

Prabowo said he felt honored by such an endorsement. “Your support reinforces my belief that we can eradicate poverty in this country.”

Later in the day, Prabowo attended a discussion at the Muhammadiyah headquarters in Central Jakarta to share his vision and mission as a presidential candidate in front of the leaders of the country’s second-largest Muslim organization.

“I’m supposed to be out of town today. But I dare not decline Muhammadiyah’s invitation [to come here]. In this country, Muhammadiyah and NU [Nahdlatul Ulama, the country’s largest Muslim organization] are two organizations that you cannot ignore,” Prabowo said, chuckling.

In his speech, Prabowo also deplored the “bitter fact” of Indonesia being unable to develop into an advanced country despite its abundant natural resources, a situation that Prabowo promised his audience would change under his leadership.

On the sidelines of the discussion, Muhammadiyah chairman Din Syamsuddin said that the presence of Prabowo in the discussion did not indicate political support for Prabowo.

“This not about political support, rather it is about holding an open discussion and sharing views,” he said.

Meanwhile in Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara, heavy rain briefly disrupted a Golkar Party campaign rally, which was attended by the party’s presidential candidate Aburizal Bakrie.

The majority of the audience in front of the main stage, totaling around 2,000 people, however, remained at the Sangkareang field to listen to Aburizal’s speech.

In his speech, Aburizal repeated the same pledges from his previous campaigns, such as the provision for 12-year free education and easy access to loans with low interest for small and medium enterprises.

Mataram was Aburizal’s second stop in his five-day Eastern Indonesia tour that will mark his final rally before the campaign season ends on April 5. Later on Wednesday, he and his entourage left for Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara.

Scholars, intellectuals endorse Prabowo’s bid

The Jakarta Globe – A group of university professors and intellectuals announced on Wednesday its collective endorsement of Gerindra Party presidential candidate and chief patron Prabowo Subianto, giving the retired army general another moral boost ahead of the upcoming presidential election. Former Bandung-based Padjadjaran University rector Yuyun Wirasasmita, who read the group’s endorsement during a gathering […]