TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - These days, political parties have been busy forming coalition to nominate a presidential candidate.
This boring maneuver after the legislative election will be automatically be just history in 2019 because by then, both the presidential and legislative elections will be done simultaneously, according to the ruling of the Constitutional Court.
However, the change will not automatically create a strong coalition in the cabinet.
The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and the National Democratic Party (NasDem) are set to nominate JokoWidodo (Jokowi) as a presidential candidate.
Meanwhile, the Great Indonesia Movement (Gerindra) party and the Development United Party (PPP) have agreed to nominate Prabowo Subianto as a presidential candidate.
However, both Jokowi and Prabowo have yet to decide their vice presidential candidate. At the same time, the public is still waiting for the movements made by other parties such as Golkar, the Democrat Party, the National Awakening Party (PKB) and the National Mandate Party (PAN).
Should there are three pairs who emerge in the presidential election race, the political constellation will be same as the one in the 2004 Presidential election.
At that time, five presidential-vice presidential candidate pairs took part in the race and each of them only had little supports from political parties. However, the number of supporting political parties at this stage does not reflect the political strength of a presidential candidate.
Theoretically, the coalition that supported SBY-Boediono pair in 2009 was stronger than that which supported SBY-Jusuf Kalla pair in 2004.
However, in practice, both coalitions are fragile. The coalition formed before the presidential election or before the forming of the cabinet was not able to produce a solid government.
Such problem will also pose a challenge for any president elected in the 2014 election.
The coalition will be felt only as a lip service and aims only to win ministerial positions. Through the power in the parliament, supporting political parties in the coalition will not hesitate to oppose the government.
The simultaneous election in 2019 is expected not to be able to eliminate the bad practice although the judges of the Constitutional Courts assumed that the ruling could strengthen the presidential system or to produce a stronger government.
The political rush such as the one happening these days will be a history because both the legislative and the presidential election will be done at the same time.
However, after the election, the elected president will continue to build a coalition. Usually, political parties losing in the election will not hesitate to join the cabinet.
Such condition is difficult to change because even the public does not punish the political parties who constantly change their stand or political parties supporting the government that do not perform well.
You can see the examples of political parties supporting the government at this year’s election. Unless the Democratic Party and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) that garnered little votes due to a litany of corruption cases, other parties such as Golkar Party, PKB, PPP and PPP got more votes instead.
According to Quick Count held by Cyrus-CSIS, the total votes of political parties supporting SBY government even reaches 55 percent, while the total votes won by political parties outside the government is only 45 percent.
This phenomenon will bring difficulties in forming a government supported by a solid and strong coalition.
Political parties will be inclined to tolerate inconsistent movements, to hesitate to become opposition and to choose joining the coalition in order to get ministerial positions in the cabinet.
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