Prabowo-Paloh Meeting Discusses Merger of NasDem and Gerindra
President Prabowo Subianto proposed a merger between the NasDem and Gerindra parties during a meeting with NasDem General Chairman Surya Paloh at his residence in Hambalang, Bogor, West Java, in February 2026.
The meeting was covered in the Tempo Weekly News edition titled “Behind Prabowo-Surya Paloh’s Idea to Unite Gerindra-NasDem”, published on 12 April 2026. According to the Tempo report, the two met before Prabowo departed for Washington DC, United States.
This was the first one-on-one meeting between Surya Paloh and Prabowo since the Gerindra General Chairman was inaugurated as president on 20 October 2024. Their last meeting occurred when Prabowo, still president-elect, visited the NasDem office in Gondangdia, Central Jakarta, in March 2024.
Surya brought a limited entourage to the Hambalang meeting. Unlike Prabowo’s usual meetings with party leaders, this one was held behind closed doors.
Surya and Prabowo spoke privately for more than an hour. The meeting was confirmed by Gerindra’s Daily Chairman Sufmi Dasco Ahmad. “It is true that they met,” said Sufmi Dasco Ahmad when asked for comment on Wednesday, 8 April 2026.
Three politicians close to Surya and a Gerindra official recounted that the meeting initially discussed the parliamentary threshold. This was because in February 2024, the Constitutional Court ruled that the House of Representatives must recalculate the party vote threshold required to enter the legislature.
Surya proposed to Prabowo that the parliamentary threshold be raised from 4% to 8%. However, Prabowo believed that increasing the DPR entry requirement could cause mid-tier and small parties like NasDem to collapse in the legislative elections.
NasDem has only garnered 6-9% of the vote in three elections since 2014.
According to a NasDem official who heard the story from Surya, Prabowo then floated the idea of merging Gerindra with NasDem. Combining the two parties would gather nearly 35 million national votes, or about 23%, based on the 2024 election results.
However, three senior NasDem officials said Surya did not see the party merger scheme as beneficial for NasDem. These three sources also said Surya was not yet willing to let go of the party he founded, which began as a community organisation. NasDem has chosen to continue its role in Prabowo’s government as a supporter, even without securing ministerial seats in the Merah Putih Cabinet.
The three senior NasDem officials explained that the party merger scheme was unrealistic because NasDem has consistently ranked fifth in two legislative elections. It would be a different matter if NasDem struggled to pass the parliamentary threshold.
A different story came from Prabowo’s inner circle. A colleague of Prabowo who communicates frequently with NasDem said the idea of merging NasDem with Gerindra actually came from Surya. The reason Surya gave this source was that the merger scheme could simplify the number of parties in Indonesia.
This person close to Prabowo revealed that the party merger would instead create complications on the ground. He cited examples where legislative candidates and electoral districts could clash in areas traditionally dominated by NasDem and Gerindra. This Gerindra official even predicted that the merger could cause the new party’s vote share to plummet rather than soar.
This source suggested that Gerindra and NasDem should each strive to pass the parliamentary threshold on their own merits.
State Secretary Minister Prasetyo Hadi had not responded to Tempo’s interview request to confirm this information as of Saturday, 11 April 2026.