One Golkar candidate wants to reactivate New Order structure

Golkar Party chairman candidate Priyo Budi Santoso plans to revive the party's tripartite structure, consisting of the military, bureaucrats and Golkar politicians, often called ABG in the New Order era, if he is elected chairman at a national meeting in Bali next month.

"I will ask several retired generals, police officers, teachers and civil servants to lead the party together. cerita misteri nyata .adv - I want to reunite the big family of ABG, though this does not mean I want to involve the military in the bureaucracy, as that is prohibited by law," Priyo said in Jakarta on Monday.

Suharto, the country's president and chief patron of Golkar during the New Order regime from 1966 to 1998, succeeded in developing the party into a powerful combination of the Indonesian Military, bureaucrats (civil servants) and Golkar politicians.

Under Suharto and the ABG structure, Golkar became the single biggest party in the country, consecutively sweeping all six general elections from 1971 until 1997 taking an average of over 60 percent of the vote.

Suharto's fall from the presidency led to a significant drop in Golkar's vote in the 1999 general election as it suffered defeat for the first time, securing 22.4 percent of the vote to come second behind the PDI-P, which won 33.74 percent.

One major cause of Golkar's electoral plunge was the political reformation of 1999 that terminated party-membership blocks involving the Indonesian Military and the civil service, which had formed two of the three mainstays of Golkar's membership.

Priyo says he wants to maintain a good relationship with activists, such as the heads of student movements and NGOs including Indonesia Corruption Watch. "We have to maintain relationships with the press, activists and others," he said.

Golkar has been split into two factions for around a year. One is led by Aburizal as chosen by a congress in Bali in November 2014, and another by Agung, who was elected at a conflicting congress in Ancol, Jakarta, in December 2015.

To help the party organize a congress as part of efforts to end its leadership conflict, the Law and Human Rights Ministry extended the Riau congress leadership, which expired in 2014, for six months on Jan. 28. As a result, Golkar will hold a national meeting on May 7 in Bali.

dongeng anak .adv - Several Golkar members other than Priyo have also declared their candidacy for the party's chairmanship, including party executive Idrus Marham, lawmaker Azis Syamsuddin and House of Representatives Speaker Ade Komarudin.