Candidates for the Presidential Race

This year, Indonesia will hold two elections i.e general election on 9 April to elect the members of national, provincial & regional parliaments; and the Presidential election on 8 July.

The General election will be participated by 38 political parties in the national level, and 6 additional political parties in the province of Aceh.
For the Presidential election, more than 10 public figures have announced their candidacy. But considering our Presidential Election Law stipulated that only candidates supported by a political party or group of political parties with min. 20% of the votes in the national parliamentary election can do so, most likely there will only be 3 candidates i.e. President Susilo Bambang Yudoyono (SBY), Vice President Jusuf Kalla and former President Megawati. As president, SBY has maximum public attention although his Democrat Party now has less parliamentary seats than Kalla’s Golkar, or Megawati’s Democratic Party for Struggle (PDIP).
Kalla's announcement about his candidacy last week surprised many people, because initially he and many members of his Golkar Party have stated that he will only run for SBY's Vice President. The change took place after SBY refuse to name his running mate.
According to The Jakarta Post/AP Simamora, Kalla's candidacy has been welcomed by elites of the new and old political parties who hope that it will provide more options for coalitions.
While The Jakarta Globe/Febriamy Hutapea quoted what President SBY has said in an interview with MetroTV that he hope Kalla's candidacy would not disturb the running of his government until its term end on 20 October.
Further, Kompas/Suhartono reported that based on a result of survey from 8 till 16 February there are three alternative possibilities for President-Vice President pairings, i.e. SBY-Kalla, Kalla-Hidayat Nur Wahid/PKS, and Megawati-Sri Sultan.

In view to the above, I hope that the parlimentary elections would result only few (5-7) political parties who will get parliamentary seats, and force the others to merge with them. Therefore our political system would be less complicated. While the Presidential election will result a proven strong, reliable, fair, unselfish, capable & motivating person as a winner.