JAKARTA The hope of the United Development Party (PPP) walking to the DPR is almost certain to run aground. For the first time in history, the party bearing the Kaaba symbol failed to place its cadres sitting in Senayan.
PPP was unable to continue the tradition of walking to Senayan because in the 2024 General Election which was held on February 14, their votes only touched 3.87 percent. With this figure, PPP failed to meet the parliamentary threshold or a parliamentary threshold of 4 percent.
PPP then registered a request for a dispute over the dispute over the results of the general election (PHPU) to the Constitutional Court (MK) on March 23.
In his petition, PPP sued the results of legislative elections in 18 provinces and around 30 electoral districts (Dapil) which were deemed detrimental to vote.
However, none of the 2024 DPR RI Legislative Election disputes they filed were granted. This means that the party that was born in 1973 for the first time has no representative in Senayan.
PPP was founded on January 5, 1973 and is a combination of four Islamic parties, namely the Nahdlatul Ulama Party (NU), the Indonesian Muslim Party (Parmusi), the Indonesian Islamic Society Party (PSII), and the Islamic Party of the Tarbiyah Islamiyah Association (Perti).
At that time, the birth of PPP was the result of the New Order government's efforts to simplify the party system in Indonesia.
As one of the oldest parties and the only Islamic party left by the New Order, PPP actually had big capital when Indonesia entered Reform in 1998. Unfortunately, they were unable to circumvent Islamic political forces and were trapped as middle parties.
"He should be able to use it as a way to strengthen his political position in the reform era. At least, he already has the provisions of cadres, politicians who already have ties to PPP before the Reformation era," said researcher at the Political Research Center of the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) Aisah Putri Budiarti.
Apart from PPP, there is also PDI which is a combination of a nationalist party, which since 1999 Megawati Soekarnoputri's camp has changed its name to PDIP.
PPP is one of three political parties participating in the 1977 to 1997 legislative elections, together with Golkar and PDI. However, PPP's votes almost always decreased in six legislative elections in the reform era, from 10.72 percent in 1999 to 3.87 percent this year.
This did not happen to PDIP. Although the vote acquisition for the bull party had fallen, the PDIP name was raised again, especially after its cadre, Joko Widodo, won the presidential election for two consecutive terms.
Likewise with Golkar, whose percentage of votes in the 2024 General Election rose again after declining after the New Order era ended. According to Aisah, Golkar's position is the same as PPP, which faced various problems within the party in the reform era.
"But Golkar remains surviving, and from the context of election history to elections (he) entered the top two or three. It is different from PPP which was then trapped in a political power middle situation in parliament," he said.
In addition to the difficulty of getting out of the middle party status, PPP is also unable to produce prominent figures. Unlike PDIP which succeeded in distributing figures such as Jokowi and Ganjar Pranowo or Gerindra with Prabowo Subianto. PPP even recruited Sandiaga Uno ahead of the 2024 General Election. Aisah assessed that PPP was wrong in naturalizing Sandiaga because it did not have 'blood of descent'.
"If naturalization in football still has an Indonesian lineage. If this is looking at Sandiaga, where is the PPP from?" Aisah explained.
Sandiaga himself has apologized for not being able to help PPP realize the mission to pass to Senayan.
"So I am indeed focusing on the transfer to PPP to raise the voice of PPP, it has not been realized, I also apologize, maybe if there is less than optimal performance during the campaign during PPP," Sandiaga said at the Parliament Complex, Senayan, Jakarta, quoted by Antara.
The problem of regeneration is not only experienced by PPP. Several other Islamic parties also met similar challenges, including the United Nations which only relied on Yusril Ihza Mahendra.
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Meanwhile, the Gelora Party with Anis Matta and Fahri Hamzah as the second chairman and deputy, and the Ummat Party with Amien Rais as chairman of the Shura assembly were also not considered capable of fighting in the legislative elections.
Meanwhile, a political observer from Al-Azhar University Indonesia Andriadi Achmad explained that Islamic parties have often experienced difficulties since the 1955 elections. The Indonesian National Party (PNI) did come out as the first edition of the election in 1955, but after that it was Golkar which dominated from 1971 to 1997.
In the reform era or since the resignation of President Soeharto in 1998, it was the PDI-P's turn to become the winning party three times. Meanwhile, Golkar and the Democratic Party were in power in 2004 and 2009.
Meanwhile, of the 18 political parties participating in the 2024 Legislative Election, only eight qualified for the DPR with votes above 4 percent. Of the eight who passed, there were two parties that were identical to Islamic groups, namely PKB and PKS.
In 2022, NU claims the number of members in Indonesia reaches 150 million. Meanwhile, the results of the study of the Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI) Denny JA in 2023, the majority of voters from NU instead placed PDIP as their favorite party with a percentage of 21.9 percent.
In the second choice, there is the Gerindra Party with a portion of 13.6 percent, while the PKB is only in third position with 11.6 percent.
"In fact, Muslims as the majority population in Indonesia do not choose Islamic parties," Andriadi told VOI.
In addition, voters, mostly millennials and Z in the 2024 election, were also unable to be utilized by PPP. Referring to the population census, the number of Gen Z reached 27.95 percent or 75.94 million of the total Indonesian population in 2020 which was 270.2 million people. Meanwhile, the millennial generation was 69.38 million people or 25.87 percent. Thus, the 2024 election was dominated by the two generations by close to around 60 percent.
The chairman of the PPP DPP, Achmad Baidowi, is aware of this and according to him, PPP must improve. "We must evaluate it in order to improve in the future, in order to respond to political changes that exist in the field," said Baidowi.
"Because, in the future, of course, the political situation will change with the demographic bonus. We have studied it," he concluded.
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