Avoid 2014-2019 Division, PPP Wants 2024 Presidential Election To Have More Than 2 Pairs Of Candidates

Deputy Chairperson of the PPP DPP, Arsul Sani (Photo: DOK VOI/Mary Handayani)

JAKARTA - Commission II of the Indonesian House of Representatives recommended that the 2024 legislative and presidential elections be held in March. After the General Election Commission (KPU) proposed that elections be held in February 2024.

By knowing the timing of the presidential election, political parties will certainly begin to square off to open up space for a coalition to carry candidate pairs.

In fact, PDIP has stated that it does not want to form a coalition with PKS because of different ideologies. Meanwhile, NasDem has scheduled the registration of the presidential candidate convention in 2022.

In response to this, the United Development Party (PPP) is still reluctant to discuss the dynamics of exploring the formation of a coalition towards the 2024 presidential election.

Deputy Chairperson of the PPP DPP, Arsul Sani, said that the most important thing at this time was to discuss how to create the 2024 presidential election as a celebration of democracy, which is better than before. Namely, bringing up more than two pairs of presidential candidates and vice presidential candidates.

"We need to encourage more than two pairs of presidential elections to be contested, although the consequences will be a second round," said Arsul, at the DPR building, Senayan, Jakarta, Friday, June 4.

According to him, if there are only two candidate pairs, it will lead to a long split, as in the 2014 and 2019 presidential elections.

"The potential for community division that occurs if the presidential election is followed by two pairs of recovery costs, the recovery costs are very expensive by social," explained Arsul.

He understands that if there are more than two pairs of candidates, there is the potential for two rounds to take place. However, he said, the split that might occur could be minimized even though the second round was only followed by two candidate pairs.

"When we have passed the first round without sharp divisions, it feels like the presidential election will be of better quality, that's what we believe today," said Arsul Sani.