PAN Welcomes Golkar's Offer To Put Airlangga-Zulhas

JAKARTA - Deputy General Chairperson (Waketum) of the National Mandate Party (PAN) Yandri Susanto said his party's internals responded well to the offer of General Chairperson of the Golkar Party Airlangga Hartarto to a duet with PAN Chairman Zulkifli Hasan (Zulhas) in the 2024 presidential election.

"In the meeting last week PAN offered the name of a new coalition or the name of a new candidate, namely Airlangga-Zulkifli Hasan, and this was responded to both internally by the party," Yandri said as quoted by ANTARA, Wednesday, May 31.

For this reason, he said, his party is currently evaluating the possibility of the Airlangga-Zulhas duet to be displayed as one of the contestants in the 2024 presidential election.

However, Yandri said that PAN is still communicating with a number of other political parties, whether it is done by the general chairman, secretary general, or other party elites.

"But we continue to communicate with Gerindra with PDIP and PKB, and we continue to carry out other parties, although sometimes we don't expose it," he said.

He said that the Airlangga-Zulhas duet offer arose between the direction of support that PAN would provide to carry the General Chair of the Gerindra Party Prabowo Subianto or Ganjar Pranowo as a presidential candidate (candidate), as well as SOE Minister Erick Thohir as a candidate for vice president (cawapres).

"I reiterate that I have often conveyed PAN between Ganjar and Prabowo, and the vice presidential candidate is Erick Thohir," he said.

Yandri also said that the decision regarding the direction of support that PAN will provide in the 2024 presidential election will be announced in the near future.

"So whether you want to go to Ganjar or Prabowo, or go forward yourself. Well, this has not been decided, in this case it will be handed over to the general chairman and it is planned to be implemented in the near future," he said.

He said the decision regarding the presidential and vice presidential candidates would be submitted to Zulhas as the General Chair of PAN, as mandated by his party's national working meeting (Rakernas).

"100 percent is only the general chairman who will be decided later," he added.

Previously, the duet of Golkar General Chair Airlangga Hartarto and PAN General Chair Zulkifli Hasan as presidential and vice presidential candidates emerged after the two met on the sidelines of the APEC ministerial meeting in Detroit, United States, Thursday (25/5).

Even without PPP expressing support for Ganjar Pranowo, Golkar and PAN could carry the presidential/vice-presidential candidate themselves. The number of seats for these two political parties is 129 seats or 22.43 percent of the total seats in parliament.

The Golkar Party itself currently has a total seat in parliament of 85 seats (14.78 percent), while PAN has 44 seats (7.65 percent).

According to the schedule, the registration of prospective presidential and vice presidential candidates will be from October 19 to November 25, 2023.

Based on Law Number 7 of 2017 concerning General Elections, pairs of presidential and vice presidential candidates are proposed by political parties or coalitions of political parties participating in the election which meet the requirements for obtaining seats of at least 20 percent of the total seats in the DPR or 25 percent of the nationally valid votes in the 2019 DPR RI Member Election.

Currently, there are 575 seats in parliament so that the pairs of presidential and vice presidential candidates in the 2024 presidential election must have at least 115 seats in the DPR RI. It could also be that the candidate pairs are promoted by political parties or a combination of political parties participating in the 2019 Election with a total valid vote acquisition of at least 34,992,703 votes.