PDI-P faces hard job in Bandarlampung mayoralty election
Oyos Saroso H.N., The Jakarta Post/Bandarlampung
Kasman, 45, the chief of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle's (PDI-P) Bandarlampung branch, has often got home late during the past few days.
Kasman's mission is an unenviable one. He has been burdened with the responsibility of organizing his party's candidate for the upcoming mayoral race.
What makes his job harder than usual is that the PDI-P only won six seats in the Bandarlampung municipal council in last year's general election; below the minimum seven seats needed for parties to put up mayoral candidates.
A seat short, the PDI-P has had to build a coalition with other political parties in the city in order to meet the threshold.
Building coalitions, Kasman has found, is not an easy task. In November last year, the PDI-P joined forces with the Freedom Bull National Party (PNBK) and the Prosperous Peace Party (PDS), which had one seat each.
But, in December, the chiefs of both parties said they were leaving the PDI-P alliance, and had chosen to build coalitions with four other parties: the Reform Star Party (PBR), the United Development Party (PPP), the National Mandate Party (PAN) and the National Awakening Party (PKB).
"I had doubted that they would support us. They often held meetings with the four parties, and apparently they discussed fielding candidates of their own," Kasman said.
The grouping had earlier accused the PDI-P of being overly ambitious for trying to put up a candidate of its own, he said.
Ignoring the charge, Kasman intensively lobbied the party bosses to support the PDI-P.
His efforts finally bore fruit after six parties, including the PNBK and PDS, apparently came into the fold and expressed their support for the PDI-P. "It will be a grand coalition that will contest the three other big political parties nominating their own candidates in the upcoming direct elections for the head of regional governments," Kasman said.
The three big parties in question are the Golkar Party, which won eight seats in the last year's election, the Democratic Party, seven; and the Prosperous Justice Party, eight.
The grand coalition had been put to a test recently and it triumphed against the three bigger parties.
"We won the vote during the election of the council leaders recently. And we will repeat the success in the upcoming direct election for the heads of regional governments," Kasman said.
But, Mahendra Utama, a local political analyst, doubted that the grand coalition would work well, saying the coalition was a fragile one.
"Every party in the coalition will have their own opinions about the candidates they will support and it will lead to potential conflicts. If they can not resolve the problem, the coalition will break up," Mahendra said.
Given that fact, the PDI-P's road to election success was still a long and windy one, he said.