Jakarta: Fears are growing in Indonesia that the coalition of losing presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto intends to mess further with the country's democracy.
Having last week abolished the direct election of regional, local and provincial governors, parties loyal to the former army strongman are now said to want to abolish the direct election of the country's president.
Instead, the president would be appointed by a body called the MPR — a joint sitting of the country's upper and lower houses. The system harks back to the days of Suharto and would put the power back in the hands of the country's oligarchs.
Mr Prabowo is also said to be seeking changes to the rules governing presidential impeachment, to enable him to directly attack the winner of the July poll, Joko Widodo.
If this is Mr Prabowo's desire, he is in a strong position to enact it. Parties supporting him, known as the Red and White Coalition, enjoy a majority in both the outgoing national parliament and the new one being sworn in on Wednesday.
Herman Kadir, a politician from the coalition-member party PAN, said the direct election of a president was a Western concept that "promotes conflict, and I think it should be abolished".
Deputy Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, who quit Mr Prabowo's Gerindra Party over the regional elections law, said he believed the directly elected president was the next target: "It surely is," he said.
However, members of the Red and White Coalition have ridiculed the idea. An MP from pro-Muslim PKS party, Hidayat Nur Wahid said, "we … are still reasonable", and one from Mr Prabowo's party, Gerindra, said "there are no thoughts about that".
Buoyed by their victory in the regional elections debate, the Red and White Coalition is talking about changing 122 laws governing business and mining which were "too liberal", as well as some relating to culture and religion.
Businessman and leader of the powerful Golkar Party, Aburizal Bakrie, said he wanted to "change the Indonesian democracy into Pancasila", referring to the state ideology which, in the hands of Suharto, created an authoritarian state.
