JAKARTA - Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democrat Party will hold coalition talks with the Golkar Party and it would be "natural" to extend the existing alliance, a top Democrat Party official said on Monday.
Leaders of various political parties have already held a flurry of talks in a rush to start building powerful pacts
ahead of the presidential election on July 8. The Democrat Party won the most votes, at around 20 percent, in Thursday's election, according to a partial official count, but will still have to form a coalition for the
presidential vote that Yudhoyono is tipped to win.
"What is clear is that until now we have and are in a coalition with Golkar," Andi Mallarangeng, who is one of the
heads of the Democrat Party, told Reuters. "Therefore of course it is natural if we continue the cooperation again," he added.
Indonesian stocks <.JKSE> and the rupiah jumped on Monday, as analysts saw the result as setting the stage for continued stability in Southeast Asia's biggest economy. Mallarangeng said that Yudhoyono and Vice President Jusuf
Kalla, who is Golkar's chairman, had already held discussions. "There will be meetings, which are more intensive, between the two parties to discuss details," added Mallarangeng, who is also a presidential spokesman.
Mallarangeng said that any coalition would have to be based on a clear set of rules to ensure effective government.
Yudhoyono, a reform-minded former general, has said he would welcome all parties but stressed the need for a formal
coalition where members were committed to the same platform. The president's reform efforts were partly thwarted by his less reform-minded ministers from other political parties during his first term in office.
Golkar, the long-time political vehicle for Suharto, the country's late autocratic ruler, is currently the biggest party in parliament, but saw its support drop from more than 20 percent to around 14 percent last week, in line with former President Megawati Sukarnoputri's PDI-P party. The Democrats almost tripled their vote from 7.5 percent in
2004, as Yudhoyono has delivered strong economic growth and brought relative peace and stability to the world's most
populous Muslim nation, which also has sizeable religious minorities.
If Yudhoyono sticks with his current alliance with Golkar and Islamist parties, analysts said this would likely mean a relatively slow pace of reform. But they still expect market-friendly policies, particularly if Yudhoyono keeps his respected finance minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, and other technocrats in the cabinet. (reuters)(//ahm)
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