Jakarta – New political parties or non-parliamentary political parties face tough competition against existing political parties in the General Election, mainly to gain support and pass the 4% electoral threshold. Based on Kompas’ findings, it appears that voter support is still limited, only around 15 percent.
Observer on global and strategic issues, Prof. Ambassador Imron Cotan explained that in order to gain voter support and pass the electoral threshold, new political parties and non-parliamentary political parties are challenged to be able to present new and fresh ideas, including offering solutions to problems faced by Millennials and Generation Z, who account for around 50 percent of 206 million voters (BPS, 2022).
“The prominence of local figures with national and global perspectives is also important to break the domination of the political elite which is piled up in big cities on the island of Java. The 2024 contest opens up these opportunities,” he concluded.
“An important thing to note is that Millennials and Generation Z are detected not to have a choice of “fixed” ideology, apart from being fixated on gadgets,” he added in the Moya Institute National Webinar with the theme “Challenges and Opportunities for New Political Parties in the 2024 Election”, Friday, July 21, 2023.
Imron said, 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.
Meanwhile, the Secretary General of the Gelora Party Mahfudz Siddiq emphasized the consequences that new political parties will receive by simultaneously establishing the Presidential and Legislative Elections in 2024. In the end, the event, which was held at the same time, made the public’s attention more concentrated on the Presidential Election and sidelined the issue of who would pass to parliament through the Legislative Election.
“Political parties that have presidential candidates will benefit more because they can boost the electability of their party, in contrast to new political parties. This requires extra effort by new political parties to socialize. The only way to do this is to endorse certain presidential candidates,” said Mahfudz.
However, in an optimistic view, Perindo Party Tuan Guru Bajang Zainul Mazdi sees that amidst the various challenges that exist, new political parties still have opportunities and great opportunities to qualify for parliament or win seats in the DPR.
“An example of my own party is Perindo, which in the last 1.5 years has experienced an increase in electability and it continues to increase to this day. This proves that public acceptance of new political parties continues to exist. Moreover, Perindo runs programs that directly touch the lives of the grassroots,” he explained.
According to the Executive Director of the Indonesian Survey Institute, Djayadi Hanan, there are seven factors that influence votes for political parties, namely having a figure covering all electoral districts; political party image; political party turnover; the ability to understand the map of competition between political parties; the charisma of the candidate at the local level; aware of the characteristics of voters; and election effects.
“New political parties should not rely on just one strategy to gain votes, but should also be supported by strategies that are suitable for the local level, by bringing in popular local figures,” said Djayadi.
In addition, according to Moya Institute Executive Director Hery Sucipto, no matter how dynamic the political and democratic contestation in 2024 is, elections must take place in a democratic, peaceful and mature manner while presenting qualified leaders.
“Old and new political parties both have challenges and opportunities. The new narrative they carry will have a different impact. Identification of issues is the
most important thing to convince voters,” he said.
