"We believe the electability will rise as the presidential election is still 1.5 years away," the party`s deputy general chairman, Sharif Cicip Sutardjo, said here on Sunday.
According to surveys done by several survey institutes and Golkar itself, the electability of Aburizal Bakrie (Ical) is still below that of Megawati Soekarnoputri, who is the general chairperson of the Indonesia Democratic Party Struggle (PDIP) and Prabowo Subianto, the chief patron of the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra).
Cicip argued that Ical was still in the third position because he had only started carrying out his political campaign in the middle of 2012 while others had already started earlier.
"Aburizal has not worked for more than a year as a nominee for a presidential candidate for the election in 2014," he said on the sidelines of the third Golkar Party regional board meeting.
Cicip meanwhile said winning regional elections would be the party`s target to later win the legislative and presidential elections in 2014.
"What has happened now is we have already won more than 50 percent of regional elections and so we hope with the leads we have cadres that would boost Golkar`s victory later," he said.*
Golkar finished second in the 2009 legislative elections after the Democrat Party while PDIP third.
Ten parties have been declared eligible to be participate in the general elections in 2014 one of them is the newly established National Democrat Party (Nasdem) led by Surya Paloh, a former Golkar figure.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono from the Democrat Party is not allowed to seek reelection by law because he has been in the post for two terms.
Besides Aburizal, Megawati has also been mentioned so far to be PDIP`s candidate for the president election in 2014.
(H-YH/B003)
Editor: Jafar M Sidik
Copyright © ANTARA 2013
