Willy Denies NasDem-Gerindra Merger Rumour: Surya Paloh Proposes Political Bloc

NasDem Party Deputy Chairman Willy Aditya has denied rumours of a merger between NasDem and Gerindra. Willy emphasised that what NasDem General Chairman Surya Paloh meant was a political bloc.

“Look, friends, so as not to be misled in thinking. This is about terminology, but terminology has substance. I joke that you all need to see what our references are. Mr Surya is someone who is concerned about our political situation. Our reference for politics is the political bloc. People discussing this are poor in political literature, I say they are poor in political literature. That’s why they use the term merger,” Willy said to reporters at the House of Representatives in Senayan, Jakarta, on Monday (13/4/2026).

Willy stressed that “merger” is a corporate term and not appropriate to describe what Surya Paloh wants. He regretted that some parties are using the “merger” narrative.

“Use the appropriate reference term for the right thing. Don’t make it up. If you don’t understand or you want to discredit, that’s another story. I want to ask those who are discoursing this: are they discrediting NasDem and Gerindra, or do they not understand political literature, they just talk nonsense,” he said.

He discussed that in the past, party fusions did occur, such as Islamic parties becoming PPP, while nationalist parties became PDIP. Then, Willy considered it a lack of knowledge when people interpreted Surya Paloh’s intention as merging NasDem and Gerindra. In fact, he said, Surya Paloh was only proposing a political bloc.

“Very poor. I actually regret people who don’t read this, their talk spreads everywhere, they don’t read. He should capture that Mr Surya is someone who thinks out of the box. We’ve always thought only about joint secretariats, coalition parties. Coalition is in the candidacy process. Meanwhile, in the government process, we don’t know coalitions, we have a presidential system. Coalition government is known in parliamentary systems,” Willy stated.

“What is offered by Surya Paloh is a political bloc, a political block, not a merger. What is a political bloc? This is a form of political engineering, how policy struggles become a breath, not transactional. We’ve been very transactional so far,” he continued.

Willy then further explained Surya Paloh’s intention with the political bloc. According to him, current political cooperation between parties tends to be minimal.

“Mr Surya is full of reflective considerations, why? Because the tendency of our political parties in political cooperation processes is minimal. You can see, they don’t agree to join here, don’t agree there. So the dominant narrative with us is either jumping ship, or creating new parties, right? True or not? That’s the dominant narrative with us. But we never have a narrative on how we can do collective political engineering together while independence remains, what unites us is the objective,” he said.

Meeting between Surya Paloh and Prabowo

Then, Willy also explained regarding the meeting between Surya Paloh and President Prabowo Subianto. According to him, the meeting was normal between the two who are friends.

“It’s normal. Two friends meeting. You can imagine when Mr Prabowo first came to Gondangdia, we discussed for six hours about many things. Where there are more intimate things to dialectics like that. Surya Paloh with Mr Prabowo at that time could discuss equally about many things. I and my colleagues at that time, in the second layer, could translate it into a political cooperation framework like what. That’s actually more productive,” Willy said.

He said the narrative developing over that meeting is too negative.

“This narrative has too negative a tone, no republican imagination, the imagination is conflict, chaos. We should prioritise advancing republican imagination. What is republican imagination? Political bloc, and that has never been exercised. Mr Surya, you can confirm first, when with Mr TK (Taufiq Kiemas) making national silaturahmi between PDIP and Golkar at that time, going around Indonesia everywhere. Did Golkar’s existence get disturbed, did PDIP’s existence get disturbed? No.”