Golkar misses target in South Sulawesi elections

Andi Hajramurni, The Jakarta Post, Makassar

The Golkar Party has proved its strength in national legislative elections, but that does not necessarily mean that it will always also be victorious in local elections.

During the direct local elections here on June 27, the former ruling party only managed to secure victories for five out of the 10 tickets it was running.

Having only got five of its stalwarts into office, the party missed its target of emerging victorious in all 10 regencies and municipalities in the province, which had been a Golkar stronghold for years. Worse still, only one of the tickets nominated solely by Golkar was elected, while the part had to work together with other parties in order to ensure the victory of the four other tickets.

The ticket that was nominated solely by Golkar consisted of Najmuddin Amirullah and Andi Paharuddin from Maros regency.

The decline in the parties support has worried Golkar leaders as it has always emerged as the largest party in national legislative elections in the province. Last year, the party collected 42 percent of the total vote in the national legislative elections in the province, while in 1999 it took 66.7 percent of the vote. Before the onset of reform in 1998, the Golkar Party consistently took over 60 percent of the total vote.

Commenting on Golkar's poor showing this time around, a senior party leader in South Sulawesi, Mohammad Roem, said that the party would evaluate why it had only managed to get five pairs of nominees elected, and not 10 as it had earlier targeted. He said that such an evaluation was badly needed as there would be 13 more local elections, including the gubernatorial election, in the province in 2008.

Roem said that Golkar would learn from its mistakes and would be more selective with its candidates in the future. Currently, the voters were no longer voting for parties, but rather for personalities.

The party's famous name is no longer a major selling point in elections. What is now most important is the candidates running in the elections, Roem explained.

"In the future, we will have to pick candidates that are acceptable to the public and whose quality has been proven," he said.

He also called on party leaders not to be selfish. He found that in many cases Golkar Party bosses in the regions demanded that they be nominated to stand in elections, even if questions hung over their abilities or integrity.

Commenting on this trend, he suggested that local party leaders should objective. If there were no party candidates worthy of nomination, the party leaders should nominate other candidates who were acceptable to the public.

He also said that in the future the Golkar Party would have to be more open-minded and willing to enter into electoral pacts with other parties.

"We will have to adopt new perspectives and strategies in order to win more elections in the future," said Roem, who headed South Sulawesi's Golkar campaign team during the local elections.