Indonesia election 2024: Labour Party seeks to shake up politics by ‘defending worker rights’

The Labour Party, made up of trade unionists, is looking to become the first centre-left party to enter Indonesia’s House of Representatives

Some analysts say it is well-placed to provide an alternative to ‘hackneyed’ ideas by the centre-right forces that have dominated Indonesia’s government for decades

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Chief of Indonesia’s Labour Party Said Iqbal speaks in Tangerang city, Banten province, on September 17, 2023. Photo: Facebook/Partai Buruh

Published: 5:00pm, 9 Jan 2024

Since Indonesia’s bloody anti-communist purge in the 1960s, politics in the archipelago nation have largely been dominated by centre-right forces. But a newly formed leftist party believes it can garner enough popular support to start changing that.

At a press conference in Jakarta on January 3, Indonesia’s Labour Party (Partai Buruh) chief Said Iqbal said his party’s electability was on the rise in the lead-up to the February 14 general election.

Said, who is also president of Indonesia’s Trade Unions Confederation, cited a recent survey by pollster Risetindo Barometer as evidence for his claim.

“An independent survey was conducted in 18 cities involving 1,200 respondents, and found 67.8 per cent of workers or 3,390,000 voters, both unionised and non-unionised, planned to vote for the PB,” he said.

Said pointed out that the figure would correspond to 2.3 per cent of Indonesia’s total number of eligible voters. “This means we only have 1.7 per cent to go before crossing the 4 per cent parliamentary threshold to make it into the House of Representatives (DPR).”

Aisah Putri Budiatri, a political scientist and researcher at Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency, said if the PB succeeded in garnering enough votes to enter parliament, it would make history.