Webinar Moya Institute, Imron Cotan: Many Challenges for New Political Parties in the 2024 Election

JAKARTA — Observer on global and strategic issues, Prof. Imron Cotan stated that there were many challenges that new political parties had to overcome in order to be able to compete with old political parties.

According to him, the presence of new ideas in society owned by new political parties will certainly create its own opportunities.

Prof. Imron said that the new political parties should also be able to provide solutions for Millennials and Gen Z, because the number in the General Election is very large, namely around 50 percent of the 206 million voters.

Furthermore, it is also important for new political parties and non-parliamentary political parties to be able to have local figures with national and global perspectives so they can break down the domination of political elites that are concentrated in big cities and usually on the island of Java.

It also turns out that Gen Z and Millennials don’t have a choice with a clear ideology, instead they are mostly just fixated on social media and gadgets.

“An important thing to note is that Millennials and Generation Z are detected not to have a ‘fixed’ ideological choice, apart from being fixated on gadgets,” he explained at a national webinar event held by the Moya Institute, with the theme ‘Challenges and Opportunities for New Political Parties in the 2024 Election’ in Jakarta, Friday (22/7).

Of course, this will be an opportunity for new political parties to take advantage of.

“If they are able to attract the support of the younger generation using gadgets, new political parties have the potential to lead to the existence of political parties that were born earlier,” said Prof. Imron.

Meanwhile, the Secretary General (Secretary General) of the Gelora Party, Mahfudz Siddiq said that simultaneous elections are a challenge in itself and tend to benefit political parties that own and carry the name of a particular presidential candidate.

“Political parties that have presidential candidates will benefit more because they can boost the electability of their party, in contrast to new political parties,” he said

Later, the Perindo Party’s Daily Chairperson, Tuan Guru Bajang Zainul Mazdi said that in fact new political parties and non-parliamentary political parties still have a chance to pass the threshold as long as they have programs that touch the common people.

“This proves that public acceptance of new political parties continues to exist, namely running programs that directly touch the lives of the lower classes,” concluded Zainul.

On the other hand, the Executive Director of the Indonesian Survey Institute, Djayadi Hanan explained that based on studies since the 2024 Election, there are several factors that new political parties can take advantage of.

These factors are that they have figures who can cover all electoral districts, the good image of their political parties, the rotation of the political party machine, how the ability to understand the map of competition between political parties, the charisma of candidates at the local level.

For Djayadi, new political parties should not only rely on one strategy to gain votes.