Union of Independent People

Union of Independent People
Serikat Rakyat Independen
Chairman	Damianus Taufan
Secretary-General	Yoshi Erlina
Founded	2 May 2011
Headquarters	Jakarta
Ballot number
DPR Seats	N/A
Politics of Indonesia Political parties Elections

The Union of Independent People (Indonesian: Serikat Rakyat Independen (SRI)) is a political party in Indonesia that supports former finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati.

Key party officials

The party was established on 2 May 2011 in Jakarta by activists from Solidaritas Masyarakat Indonesia untuk Keadilan (SMI-Keadilan) or Indonesian People's Solidarity for Justice. They were:^[1]

• Damianus Taufan
• Yoshi Erlina
• Susy Rizky

Sri Mulyani as presidential candidate

The party will support and nominate Sri Mulyani Indrawati for president in the 2014 presidential election. Currently Sri Mulyani is working for the World Bank as a managing director. She has said, "Right now I am extremely busy with work that comes with the beginning of the fiscal year here."^[2]

Sri Mulyani got 63rd place in the 2011 list of the world's 100 most powerful women announced by Forbes. It was the third time after 2009 and 2008 with rank 71st and 23rd respectively.^[3]

Until early November 2011, there are no intention of the party to make alliance with the Democratic Party or other parties, although Sri Mulyani is not so popular, but the poll put Sri Mulyani among the top-10 most popular presindential candidates for 2014.^[4][5]

Legal process

The party failed in its initial attempt at the political party verification process at the Law and Human Rights Ministry. The party then appealed to the Constitutional Court, was told on 4 August, 2011that it was obliged to abide by the Political Parties Law requiring all parties to have representative offices in at least 75 percent of all municipalities and regencies and 50 percent of districts in all 33 provincies. The party has until 22 August 2011 to meet the requirement.^[6]

On 22 August 2011 representative of the SRI's party submitted some paperwork to complete the registration process. The verification to all parties would end at 22 September 2011 and then before 3 weeks will be announced the verification passed parties.^[7] The party has passed administration process and now doing fact-checking process to match between the administration with the fact.^[8] From 14 new parties, only Nasdem Party has passed the verification, stated as legally party and proper to follow the next step of Election party verification. The other 13 parties, including Union of Independent People Party have still a change to complete the requirements until 25 November 2011.^[9] On 17 December 2011 the Law and Human Rights Ministry announced that the Union of Independent People's Party (SRI) failed to pass the verification process. SRI officials quickly denounced the decision suspecting that it was politically motivated. SRI Party chairman claimed that his party had fulfilled all administrative requirements. So, SRI Party cannot contest in the 2014 elections.^[10]

Re-verification

Constitunional Court has decided the General Elections Commission (KPU) should also verify all parties including parties which in the parliament today and so KPU re-verification all the parties including SRI, but SRI failed in the first step of (administrative) verification which is announced at October 28, 2012.^[11]

References