PAN In Hesitance For The 2024 Presidential Election: Between Supporting Cadres Or Supporting Presidential Candidates From Other Parties

Secretary General of PAN Eddy Soeparno (Capture YouTube screen)

JAKARTA - The National Mandate Party (PAN) is still conducting internal evaluations regarding the nomination of candidates in the 2024 presidential election. PAN has not yet decided whether to nominate its own candidate or support candidates from other parties.

This was revealed by the Secretary General of PAN Eddy Soeparno in a virtual discussion held on Saturday, June 5. "The election is the focus and target for political parties. For PAN, of course, we will still evaluate internally regarding our potential to participate in the 2024 presidential election," said Eddy.

"Again, for a political party, it is a matter of pride when its cadres can advance in the presidential election," he added.

Eddy said his party already had a track record of carrying out its own candidate in the presidential elections in previous years. For example, in the 2004 presidential election, carrying Amien Rais. Then, in 2014, Hatta Rajasa became his vice presidential candidate.

"Of course we will see the electability of our cadres ahead of the presidential election. But for PAN, we focus on how our cadres can work. Now we focus on dealing with COVID-19, so we can prove our political parties have very high concern and work for the people," he said.

Furthermore, Eddy said that in several surveys the level of people's trust in political parties and the DPR is low. Therefore, he considered this step to be one of the best ways for political parties to be present in the midst of society.

For PAN, according to Eddy, the election problem is not only focused on the presidential election, but how to increase vote acquisition in the 2024 election. Then, the next discussion is how many pairs of candidates will be in the 2024 presidential election.

"That's what maybe I can open a little PAN position regarding the discussion of the 2024 presidential election," he said.

Based on the results of a national survey, there are three presidential candidates with the highest electability. According to Eddy, from the recent survey results, the three names of the figures have not moved. That is, no one shifts their position. These three figures are Prabowo Subianto, Ganjar Pranowo, and Anies Baswedan.

"If it moves, it's just between themselves, no one from positions 4 and 5 to the top three. We see Prabowo, the party leader, Ganjar, a genuine political party cadre but not the party's main policy maker. Anies doesn't have a party. So here are 3 candidates who already have high electability with different characters from one another," he said.

Reflecting on this survey, Eddy said that the simulation of the political party coalition in 2024 needs to be observed. Will the nationalists fill the space of nationalists alone, or will the marriage of nationalists and religions be, or will religion stand alone?

"This needs to be observed in the future, what is the will of the community, and of course we see how the political parties conduct discussions between them, to create coalitions in the future," he said.

Regarding the candidates, Eddy said that the current simulation cannot be separated from the existing reality. He suspected that there might be political whispers, discussions among political figures to juxtapose A and B or A and E.

"We want to convey that the candidate pair that we want to propose is ideally not just to win to reach the 2024 finish line, but to be able to work together for the future, support each other, and complement each other," he explained.