NasDem Says Surya Paloh Offers Political Bloc to Gerindra, Not Merger

Jakarta – NasDem’s Deputy Chairman Willy Aditya stated that the party’s General Chairman Surya Paloh is essentially offering the concept of a political bloc, rather than a merger or fusion with other political parties.

The statement was made by Willy in response to rumours that NasDem would merge with Gerindra.

“What Surya Paloh is offering is a political bloc. A political bloc, not a merger,” he said when met at the parliamentary complex in Senayan, Jakarta, quoted on Tuesday, 14 April 2025.

He explained that a political bloc is part of political engineering as an effort to block the current transactional tendencies in party relations.

“It’s been very transactional all this time, right? We need a solid political bloc from top to bottom, like that. The understanding shouldn’t be merger,” he said.

He regretted those using the merger narrative. According to him, the term is not appropriate in the political context.

Willy acknowledged that Indonesia’s political landscape has been marked by fusions or mergers of parties, but those were done based on state decisions.

“We have had a tradition of party fusions, but it was driven from above by those in power. The merging of parties only happened twice: Islamic parties into PPP, nationalist parties into PDI,” he explained.

He assessed that those using the merger narrative failed to grasp Surya Paloh’s idea, which he believes is full of reflective considerations.

“They should capture that Pak Surya is someone who thinks out of the box. All this time we’ve only thought about shared secretariats, coalition parties. Coalitions are in the candidate nomination process. Meanwhile, in government, we don’t know coalitions,” he said.

“We have a presidential system; coalition government is known in parliamentary systems,” he continued, explaining the background of the political bloc idea.

He further exemplified the implementation of political blocs in Indonesia.

“Golkar is a political bloc. Remember the old law, the Political Parties and Functional Groups Law. That means we had two political blocs. One, back when Bung Karno issued the decree, it was called the National Front, named Nasakom. The second, the functional groups, previously Sekber Golkar. That was a political bloc,” said Willy.