KUALA LUMPUR, June 29 — Indonesian political newcomer Solidarity Party Indonesia (PSI) is taking a lesson from Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) successful election strategy for its own campaign in Indonesia’s polls next year.

PSI chairman Grace Natalie told Malay Mail in an exclusive interview yesterday that her party now planned to focus on its core strength — social media outreach — after a discussion with DAP’s Yeo Bee Yin.

"Our [mainstream] media isn’t as bad as the situation here [before PH’s victory] where the Opposition can’t be in [mainstream] TV at all. But at the same, to increase awareness through commercial terrestrial TV is very costly.

"As a new party we have limited resources. We have good people but not enough financially. We do our fundraising but campaigning in television or newspaper can be very costly.

"DAP shared how they heavily or even totally used social media because they can’t have access to other media platforms. It really inspired us. We use social media as our backbone but the result isn’t optimal yet,” said the leader of Indonesia’s youngest party founded in 2014.

Natalie said the meeting educated her and made her realise the mistakes her party has made in the run up for their elections.

Being new to the Indonesian political arena, PSI previously sought to compete with the established parties in areas where the latter were already dominant while also conducting social media campaigns.

However, this taxed the party’s resources more heavily than anticipated.

"We were being reminded that, as a new political party, we have so many things to do at once but we have limited people. We are newcomers in politics so our experience in politics is relatively low compared to the senior politicians.

"So, it was easy to get lost and distracted because we want to make ourselves stronger. It’s good to be strong in everything but it will be very costly and we have limited time and resources. That’s what we got from Yeo Bee Yin. To focus on our core,” said Natalie.

PSI contests using the platform of women empowerment, youth and plurality. It appeals mostly to educated urban youths located in Indonesia’s megacities such as Jakarta, Surabaya, and Jogjakarta.

The party does not allow those aged above 45 to join and it consists mainly of those between the ages of 20 and 35. Currently, PSI’s greatest hurdle is to generate awareness among the public.

In this area, Natalie said the Bakri MP taught her that having a strong message was paramount.

She admitted she was taken up with the short videos and viral messages that DAP has perfected over the years, but said her party needed to adapt the strategy for Indonesian voters.

"We have no problem with content, no political baggage with the people, no skeletons in the closet and we have this good mechanism but the challenge is to raise awareness.

"And with the behaviour of social media users now, content is king. Once you have good content, it can go viral and people will share it willingly so content, content, content! That’s what Yeo Bee Yin said. Number one rule: Content! Content! Content!” she said.

Although the youth will make up 55 per cent of Indonesia’s voting population in 2019, a study has shown that only 30 per cent are social media savvy and likely to be aware of PSI and its causes.

However, Natalie believes that securing just 20 per cent of the youth vote will be enough to put her party in her country’s parliament as this would already exceed the 4 per cent electoral threshold that is the minimum required to obtain a parliamentary seat.

Indonesia utilises a proportional representation election system in which parties are allocated seats based on their share of the vote, whereas Malaysia employs the winner-takes-all first-past-the-post system.