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JAKARTA. Presidential frontrunner Joko “Jokowi” Widodo says he will welcome the inclusion of the Golkar Party in a coalition to support his future administration.
“Yes, that will be good, it means we can work together,” Jokowi told reporters in Bandung, West Java, on Saturday, as reported by tempo.co.
Jokowi, however, said he could not promise anything to Golkar if the party finally joined his coalition.
He said there would be no political transactions within the coalition. “We’ve already said there will be no conditions,” he added.
Media reports have revealed that a number of Golkar politicians have expressed regret at their decision to support the presidential bid of the Gerindra Party’s Prabowo Subianto, especially after learning that most credible surveys showed the Jokowi-Jusuf Kalla ticket to have won the election.
A quick count conducted by the Cyrus Network and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) showed Jokowi-Kalla had won the election with 47.17 percent, whereas rival ticket Prabowo-Hatta Rajasa had only garnered 42.15 percent.
Late last week, a number of Golkar politicians said a rival faction within the party would attempt to unseat chairman Aburizal Bakrie.
If it succeeded, then Golkar would likely join the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and its coalition partners — the NasDem Party,
the National Awakening Party (PKB) and the Hanura Party — in the ruling government.
With Golkar in the coalition, it is expected that a potential Jokowi administration will have a majority in the House of Representatives.
