IO – Secretary-General of Golkar Party Lodewijk Freidrich Paulus announced that Golkar is determined to nominate its general chairman, Airlangga Hartarto, as a presidential candidate regardless of which parties they build a coalition with in the 2024 elections.
Lodewijk said Tuesday (2/8/2022) Golkar cadres “insist” on putting Airlangga forth as a presidential candidate, as this was a decision made in a National Deliberation (Munas).
He added that Golkar Party has strong bargaining power to form a coalition with any other political parties to nominate Airlangga Hartarto, because of Golkar’s achievement in 2019. “We obtained the second-highest number of seats in the House of Representatives,” said Lodewijk, Deputy Speaker of the House.
Thus, Lodewijk said Golkar should look for one party whose votes in parliament are not too significant, so they can collaborate in nominating Airlangga as a presidential candidate.
However, he admitted that there have not yet been any discussions between Golkar and other parties to create a coalition in the 2024 presidential election, because political parties are currently focusing on increasing their electoral votes.
“We’ll see how it goes. Surely later, there will be deals between the political parties to form a strong coalition. So, let’s wait. In the next six months, perhaps there will be a development for it to formulate as a policy,” he said. (des)