Amien Rais leads talks on coalition

JAKARTA. Former speaker of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) Amien Rais facilitated a meeting between Muslim-based political parties in an effort to set up a coalition known as the “central axis.”

United Development Party (PPP) secretary-general M. Romahurmuziy said that Amien had convinced the leaders of 14 Muslim parties to start a coalition ahead of the 2014 legislative election.

“The meeting has already gone ahead. We were silent about this because we wanted the plan to be solid first,” Romahurmuziy said as quoted by tribunnews.com. He said that the Muslim-based parties had not yet decided on their presidential ticket. “We wanted to first be united,” he said.

Amien, now a senior member of the National Mandate Party (PAN), had said earlier that smaller Islam-based political parties could unite to form a coalition and nominate a presidential candidate to contend with the Democratic Party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the Golkar Party and other major players.