Political Party Management Strategy: An Approach to Political Communication Strategy

In the 2019 Legislative Election there were 19 parties participating in the election contest, of which 4 new parties passed, while in the 2024 Legislative Election there were 24 parties that passed, including 4 new parties, one of which was the Gelora Party and in South Sulawesi only 18 parties passed the election. This research aims to (1) describe the Gelora Party's communication planning in obtaining legislative seats. (2) describes the implementation of Gelora Party communications to obtain legislative seats. This research was carried out at the Gelora Party DPW Office, South Sulawesi. Data collection was carried out through observation, in-depth interviews and documentation. Data analysis uses qualitative methods with a narrative or descriptive qualitative study approach. The results of the research show that the Gelora Party's Political Communication Strategy as a New Party in the 2023 General Election continues to implement a political communication strategy in winning legislative seats, where means of supporting political communication such as creative and up-to-date social media content to support the popularity of legislative candidates, a persuasive approach is still dominant. The Gelora Party and its image as a Nationalist Party became an obstacle in gaining support from other religious groups.


Introduction
In the 2019 Legislative Election, the General Election Commission (KPU) announced the political parties that had passed.Where, there are 14 parties that have passed and 4 of them are new parties.They are the Indonesian Unity Party (Perindo), the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), the Berkarya Party, and the Indonesian Movement for Change Party (Garuda).The popularity of these four parties has skyrocketed over the past few years.
This cannot be separated from the strength of its founders who come from various fields, including entrepreneurs, activists and journalists (Finlayson, 2021).The four new parties have their own ideas and strategies to attract public sympathy and increase votes in the 2019 elections.
Meanwhile, in the 2024 Legislative General Election, there are 24 parties that have passed, 4 of which are new parties, namely the Labor Party, Gelora Party, PKN Party and Garuda Party (Janah et al., 2023;Astuti, 2022).The following is the KPU's statement on Kompas.comregarding the political parties that passed.The phenomenon of the emergence of new parties also occurred, but if we look back, in the 2019 elections there were four newcomers (Colvin & Jotzo, 2021).However, the vote results for these four political parties were very low, and none of the new parties that participated in the legislative elections passed the parliamentary threshold.The following is data on new and old parties that passed the 2019-2024 Legislative Election: Source: Processed by Researchers (2023) Where, the stages of the 2024 General Election have been determined in KPU Regulation Number 3 of 2022 concerning the stages and schedule for holding the 2024 general election, known as PKPU Number 3 of 2022 which starts from 14 June 2022 to 20 October 2024 and the General Election will be held simultaneously on 14 February 2024.
The phenomenon of new parties at every election never stops.However, usually the tides ebb and flow, after the election ends, not many parties are able to survive for long.One by one they fell.
The participation of newcomer parties in the 2024 electoral contestation will make the competition space even tighter because each party will compete with each other in the voter market to get parliamentary seats.The big challenge for new parties in elections is that they will face old parties which often survive in elections, as proven by their success in winning parliamentary seats.
The entry of new parties into the election competition makes the competition space tighter because they will compete with each other in the voter market.New parties in the elections will face old parties which tend to be able to maintain their existence in the elections as proven by their success in winning seats in parliament.
According to the Politika Research & Consulting (PRC) survey in June 2022 regarding the electability of political parties.There has not been much change in the electability of the parties, PDI Perjuangan is still the temporary leader in political party electability (Riyansyah et al. 2021;Susanti & Setiajid, 2022).With electability reaching 18.2 percent.Gerindra Party with electability of 12.7 percent.Then the Golkar party 12 percent.Democratic Party with electability of 9.7 percent.Furthermore, PKB is 8 percent, PKS is 7.8 percent, up to NasDem is 5.5 percent (Suryana & Effedy, 2016).This data shows that public interest remains in the old party, this will be a disaster and a challenge for the new party to maximize its popularity and electability in the eyes of the public to gain support.
Meanwhile, the new political party has quite high popularity in the eyes of the public, as per the results of the first rmol.idpolitical survey, the Gelora Party with a popularity of 14.31 percent, 60.23 percent likeability, and 1.7 percent potential to be chosen.The Gelora Party is one of the new political parties in Indonesia.The Gelora Party was founded on October 28 2019 or several months after the 2019 elections were held.The founding of this party cannot be separated from the figure of former President of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) Muhammad Anis Matta (Handayani et al., 2023).Apart from Anis Matta, there are 99 founders of Gelora who come from 34 provinces in Indonesia.The establishment of this party was declared at the national consolidation event on 10 November 2019.There are several wellknown figures who are members of it, such as Deddy Mizwar, Fahri Hamzah, Hadi Mulyadi and also Triwisaksana.These five figures are PKS figures, so Gelora is always associated with a splinter of the PKS Party (Machmudi, 2020).
The Gelora Indonesia Party was formed because several of its cadres were involved in the vortex of internal conflict within the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) (Asmar et al., 2021).It is Copyright © 2024, Journal La Bisecoman, Under the license CC BY-SA 4.0 known that many high-ranking Gelora Party officials are former cadres who have left PKS (Lestari & Siboy, 2021).
The aim of the Gelora Party as an Indonesian political party is to realize the hope that Indonesia can rise and progress towards becoming the 5th power in the world (Ananda et al., 2023).On March 31 2020, the Gelora Party advanced to register with the Ministry of Law and Human Rights (Kemenkumham) as a political party.So now, Gelora has officially become a political party after receiving a Decree (SK) number M. HH-11.AH.11.01 of 2020 from the Ministry of Law and Human Rights in 2020.
The presence of the Gelora Party in the national political arena needs to be taken into account, the Gelora Party is led by Anis Matta as General Chair, Fahri Hamzah as Deputy General Chair, and Mahfuz Sidik as General Secretary, all three of whom are Maulida Rita Widyana, senior politicians who have made the name of PKS (Umam, 2020).
In the 2024 legislative election in South Sulawesi there are 18 political parties (political parties) that have pledged a peace declaration, where the parties that have passed are PKB, Gerindra, PDIP, Golkar, NasDem, Labor Party, Gelora, PKS, PKN, Hanura, Gerindra, PAN, PBB, Democrat, PSI, Perindo, PPP and Patai Ummat.Based on South Sulawesi KPU data (2023), the South Sulawesi Indonesian People's Wave Party is a DPW with 100 members.As a new party that is not yet known by the wider community, the party is trying to gain the trust of the public and also gain political legitimacy (Riqbalb, 2019).Therefore, the Gelora Party needs to implement its strategy to gain public support and also occupy the parliamentary threshold in the 2024 simultaneous legislative elections in South Sulawesi.
Moreover, in the 2019 legislative election there were several old and new parties that did not qualify, while in the 2024 legislative election many new parties did, including the Gelora party.One of the reasons the new party passed was because the political communication approach used by this new party allowed them to pass the contest.This is what made me interested in researching what kind of political communication strategy the Gelora Sulsel party implemented.What is the Gelora Party's political communication planning strategy to win legislative seats?What is the strategy for implementing political communication for the Gelora Party to win legislative seats?Describe the Gelora Party's political communication planning strategy in obtaining legislative seats.Describe the Gelora Party's strategy for implementing political communications to obtain legislative seats.Theoretical use, namely as an additional reference in political science regarding the phenomenon of the emergence of new political parties in the upcoming 2024 elections.Practical use, namely useful as reference material for local politics and regional autonomy courses regarding the strategy of new political parties in the 2024 elections, useful for fulfilling the requirements for obtaining a Master's degree in Communication Sciences at Fajar University, Makassar.

Methods
The research used in this research is descriptive with a qualitative approach, The location of this research was carried out at the South Sulawesi Gelora Party Office on JL.Pelita 3 Utara No.8 Masale Village, Panakkukang District, Makassar City, South Sulawesi, 90231.In this research, researchers used data collection techniques using interview, observation and documentation techniques.

Gelora Party Political Communication Strategy
Strategy is the science of techniques or tactics, methods or tricks to achieve something desired.
Politics is the interaction between government and society in the context of the process of making and implementing binding decisions regarding the common good of the people living in a certain area.So, political strategy is the science of techniques, tactics, methods, tips managed by politicians to obtain and maintain sources of power, formulate and implement political decisions as desired, to realize this political strategy requires communication.
Political communication is the process of exchanging messages between people who carry out political activities, as actors with the direction and purpose of the message being determined by the order of mechanisms that apply in social life, McNair (2017) said that: Political communication is a pessimistic view that tells about political content as distributed in various forms through the mass media to a large audience dominated by various sources with the scope of the media's own interests, not the interests of citizens or the democratic process.
Each party uses various methods to recruit its cadres, of course in different and unique ways depending on what kind of planning system and communication implementation system is implemented by each party, in this case the author presents the planning system and political communication implementation system within the Gelora Party based on the results research that has been carried out.

Gelora Party Communication Planning Strategy
In building consensus, a politician or activist must have the ability to compromise, which is an art in itself.Therefore, what is the art of compromise for PKS when there is conflict, differences of opinion or views?Based on the facts that the author has seen in the field, the things that PKS does are through deliberation or what is called syuro, with the existence of syuro so that it can resolve conflicts and find solutions.In the ideological election, the Gelora Party, which is nationalist and wants to represent the population, has a strategy to collaborate with other parties in the regions.Especially those in the regions in the 2024 Pilkada (Regional Head Election).Budi Prasetya Dwi Putra said that: "The Gelora Party communicates and collaborates with other parties in the 2024 regional head elections in South Sulawesi," (Interview on January 3, 2024).
The Gelora Party collaborates based on similar narratives or ideas.When choosing a figure, it is not haphazard, you need to look at the narrative, opinions and ideas.If the narrative and ideas match the Gelora Party, the Gelora Party will collaborate and support the winner.
"The Gelora parties will meet/collaborate and separate because of the narrative, regardless of color differences, if the narrative they bring is different then they will contest, if the narrative raised is the same, they will collaborate."Contestation occurs when narratives differ, the Gelora Party focuses on fighting on ideas and narratives."(Interview on January 3, 2024).
With the current centripetal condition of the Indonesian party system, the Gelora Party's strategy to promote nationalist ideology has proven to increase its chances of coming to power.
In contrast to the centrifugal party system, different ideologies make it difficult for parties in Indonesia to collaborate.The Gelora Party compromised in the upcoming regional election battle in South Sulawesi with the belief that it would win.
Talking about compromise, sees compromise as a way to deal with conflicts of interest.
Compromise becomes a negotiation process to convince all parties that full achievement of their values and interests is impossible.The Gelora Party is taking a compromise step by collaborating with other parties in the upcoming regional head elections in South Sulawesi.
The Gelora Party certainly has its own interests, but with a compromise involving other parties, existing interests will be inventoried, each party will get a position in the winning seat.
A character is a person who has credibility (al amin), attractiveness, and power.In other words, character is the same as ethos, which is a combination of credibility, attraction and power.
People who have character can also be called political heroes.In political communication, people will essentially pay attention to who the political figures are rather than what political message will be conveyed.This shows that character is very important in political communication.
Based on the results of an interview with the Chairman of the South Sulawesi Gelora Party DPW, he said that the Gelora Party's efforts were to groom figures, namely candidates who wanted to run were selected who were considered by the people concerned to have figures in society, for example the head of the RW, LPM, mosque imam and other community figures.
where Gelora provides guidance to them so that they fulfill the requirements of the party cadre formation mechanism.
"Another effort that was made was to bring ourselves directly down to the electoral district so that we could build closeness between the community and Gelora.Gelora legislative candidates and cadres have been asked by the party to interact more with the community, carry out social activities, give recitations, build drilled wells, and work together."The character of the Gelora legislative candidates is that their performance is close to and caring for the community, they are religious figures," (Results of interviews conducted on January 3 2024).Not only that, he also said that in maintaining relationships with community figures and influential people who can support the Gelora Party to gain empathy from the community and have great opportunities.Apart from relations carried out by the local community, there are also relations made within the party and party leaders.
"Another effort that was made was to bring ourselves directly down to the electoral district so that we could build closeness between the community and Gelora.Gelora legislative candidates and cadres have been asked by the party to interact more with the community, carry out social activities, give recitations, build drilled wells, and work together."The character of the Gelora legislative candidates is that their performance is close to and caring for the community, they are religious figures," (Results of interviews conducted on January 3 2024).Not only that, he also said that in maintaining relationships with community figures and influential people who can support the Gelora Party to gain empathy from the community and have great opportunities.Apart from relations carried out by the local community, there are also relations made within the party and party leaders.This is proven by the following interview results.

"The social resources used are relations between internal and external parties. In this structural approach or relations between internal parties, it is carried out through the DPM, DPW, DPD, DPC, or between the Gelora Parties which establish relations between regions. "Then, with mass organization figures from the center to the regions, later these mass organization figures will carry out socialization or introduce the public
Copyright © 2024, Journal La Bisecoman, Under the license CC BY-SA 4.0 to the Gelora Party with the aim of seeking the masses or gaining support," (Interview conducted on January 3 2024).
Politicians must recognize, understand, know the needs and motivations of the audience.Voters cast their votes for a party or candidate based on their ideology or political beliefs.Some people choose parties on the grounds that the party defends religion and supports pluralism.Some other people choose political parties on the grounds that the party's policies favor the small people.
In understanding the public, the methods used by the Gelora Party were: "Carrying out friendship, each cadre visits 40 houses before the campaign period or does it well in advance, socializing in mosques, prayer rooms, working together, conveying Islamic messages in accordance with the party's ideology.Gelora did this not only because of the election, but it has become a habit" (interview 3 January 2024).
"The cultural resources that are owned are ownership in terms of knowledge, for example the image of religion by opening a Koran reading house specifically for all communities."Then, in South Sulawesi itself, we usually provide a place for the public if they want to hold an event, they can use the hall, so this approach is used to attract people's sympathy."(Interview on January 03, 2024).
Politicians who will lobby to find solutions by building consensus must start with a willingness to open themselves.
Chairman of the DPD Gelora Kata Makassar, said that the Gelora Party is a party that is open to anyone, not just Muslims, even non-Muslims, works together with other parties, accepts input and criticism, so that it can be a reference for Gelora to become an even better party.
Talking about money politics is one of the topics that is discussed a lot during elections.The legislative candidates are competing to win the people's votes, even going so far as to use any means possible.Money politics is the exchange of money with the intention of determining someone's position.It is said that the Gelora Party strongly rejects and is against money politics, Gelora directed its cadres not to do things that fool the public.
"There are many other ways to get people's votes, not in haram ways."Gelora invites cadres to abandon cultures that damage democracy, to engage in politics honestly," (Interview on January 3, 2024).
The Gelora Party utilizes communication facilities such as social media to reach wider targets.
Head of Cadre Development revealed that the Gelora Party utilizes social media such as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Tiktok to attract the participation of beginner voters or in this case millennial voters, namely those aged 17 years or more on voting day.This is stated in article 4 of Law number 7 concerning General Elections (Pemilu).
"I am the Head of Division (Kabid) for member recruitment.This is all depicted in Gelora TV's YouTube content."There is some content that we create for millennials on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Tiktok." (Interview Results 21 September 2023).

Gelora Party Communication Implementation Strategy
In accordance with the existence of media as an extension of human senses, media is only needed for long-distance communication, while for close-range or face-to-face communication of course media is not needed.To communicate long distances with many people (masses), mass media or internet media are needed.
Copyright © 2024, Journal La Bisecoman, Under the license CC BY-SA 4.0 In political communication, all media can be used because the aim is to shape and develop public opinion, as well as influence voters in elections.
This was explained that the media used by the Gelora Party during campaigning and outreach to increase vote acquisition in the 2024 election were all media used from billboards, social media.This is done so that the public can get to know political parties and cadres and even Gelora legislative candidates.
The Covid-19 pandemic limited movement activities and mass crowds so that the Gelora Party had to fight hard to be widely known by the public.Publication through the media is one of the methods used by the Gelora Party.
"Podcast and webinar programs as political education media.With the modern equipment used, the Gelora Party established a mini studio and also a Gelora radio to become a means of political education for the community."This is actually a solution used to socialize the party so that it can be known by the wider community," (Interview on January 3, 2024).
There are several programs carried out by the Gelora Party with political education because in fact political parties must be at the forefront in developing society regarding political education.Through podcasts and webinars from the Gelora Party, it is hoped that it will be able to support political education for the public regarding the importance of political values and norms in the state.
"Therefore, the existence of mass media is an effective tool used by the Gelora Party to increase electability in the national political arena."This shows that political campaigns today cannot be separated from developments in technology and information," (Results of interviews on January 3, 2024).
It is important for the Gelora Party to use mass media for its campaign because it can convey its political messages to the audience and have a relatively large influence in gaining people's sympathy (Sellita, 2020).This also causes the message from the party to be heard by the general public, even though it is temporary.Apart from online activities, the South Sulawesi Gelora Party also went directly to the field to help ease the burden on people affected by natural disasters such as flash floods that occurred in North Luwu and floods in Makassar City.
Activities carried out include collecting data on affected residents, establishing disaster posts, public kitchens, distributing ready-to-eat food and distributing logistical aid.
According to Chairman of DPD Gelora Pinrang, one form of political communication that can be carried out by parties is agitation.Agitation means moving or moving.South Sulawesi Gelora Party cadres continue to move to help communities affected by disasters.
"When going into the field, the attribute is also included as a symbol of public service as well as socializing the existence of a party that has a great sense of empathy and comes to help even though it is not election season," (interview on January 3 2024).

Gelora Party Member Recruitment Strategy
The recruitment or cadre formation system is the main thing in determining the quality level of a political party.Various political parties show that the cadre formation pattern is still weak and worrying.Basically, the ease with which each cadre can move and also the level of open acceptance of the party, this implies the failure of the party to instill ideology in its cadres and also the existence of dysfunction between the cadre formation pattern and the party recruitment system.
Copyright © 2024, Journal La Bisecoman, Under the license CC BY-SA 4.0 The results show that political parties do not carry out cadre formation of reliable cadres, but instead become an agenda for providing tickets for public positions.In reality, the current cadre formation system is not systematic and sustainable.This is proven by field practice which states that cadre development is only carried out before elections.
In fact, the cadres who are trained are not guaranteed to be able to get a small serial number on the ballot paper (Aji, 2020).Cadres who are already active in the world of politics can also be overtaken by cadres from other parties who have just joined due to certain reasons, namely the presence of greater capital than the party's cadres.A system like this results in negative public sentiment towards political parties increasing.Now, political parties no longer prioritize cadres who have gone through a hard struggle, but instantly recruit cadres who have already been formed (Aji, 2020).

Opportunities for Gelora Party Political Communication
There is a big political opportunity for the Gelora Party because the Gelora Party has the power to win the vote base from PKS.However, it will indeed be difficult for new parties to obtain the parliamentary threshold.This is in accordance with Law no.7 concerning Elections, where the parliamentary threshold is 4%.
Therefore, political opportunities are an advantage for the Gelora Party.According to Haboddin (2017), political opportunities consist of having support from a political party, having support from the community, leaders who have political communication skills in public, and having social networks with other authorities.
The following are the results of an interview with Chair of the South Sulawesi Gelora Party DPW: "The political opportunity factors in the Gelora Party already existed when we were about to form a political party."The Gelora Party already has the highest popularity and electability among new parties because the level of introduction of the party to the public is carried out in a structured, systematic and massive manner."(Interview on January 03, 2024).The political opportunity factor is also the main thing for the Gelora Party.With the belief of the Gelora Party, the strength of the Gelora Party is one of the reasons it has a leader who has been involved in the world of politics for a long time to be able to organize its members.Then, the formation of the Gelora Party actually received a positive reaction from the public and they believed that with the emergence of the Gelora Party, it would aspire to the interests desired by the Indonesian state.
In their aim to attract the masses, actors from the Gelora Party must pay close attention to political opportunity factors.The reputation and popularity of Gelora Party members are the main indicators for attracting the public.By having a good reputation, the actor becomes a consideration for the public in making their choice.Then, reputation is also related to popularity.From high popularity it is hoped that it can also garner high votes.This is also felt by the Gelora Party because its members are those who have been in politics for a long time.
Based on the political communication strategy carried out by the Gelora Party, there has been a record of more than one million user member growth throughout Indonesia.As stated by Syamsari Kitta in his interview as follows: "We have a member growth information system website so you can see it based on their nickname.Last month the DPN released the total number in Indonesia which was more than 1 million, in KTA it was more than 1 million.All movements and strategies end Copyright © 2024, Journal La Bisecoman, Under the license CC BY-SA 4.0 there, leading to voters and data collectors based on their nicknames.So it started since the founding of the Gelora Party."(Interview September 21, 2023).
"The last survey in the province, out of 11 electoral districts, there were only 2 electoral districts that we could not enter, namely the Toraja electoral district and the Bone electoral district."(Interview September 21, 2023).
The ongoing political communication within the Gelora Party has produced results as expected, one of which is the full number of legislative candidates in almost every region in South Sulawesi."For legislative candidates at the provincial level, we have filled all the quota, but for districts/cities we have around 80%.

Conclusion
The Gelora Party as a new party in the 2024 general election continues to implement political communication strategies in winning legislative seats.Supporting political communication facilities such as creative and contemporary social media content are still needed to support the popularity of legislative candidates.The persuasive approach and characterization factors of the Gelora Party legislative candidates are still dominant within the party.The image of being a Muslim or a follower of a particular religion is an inhibiting factor in gaining support from other religious groups.The Gelora Party does not mention the mainstream media in implementing the self-image process.It is better to use mainstream media in promoting parties or legislative candidates.The intensity of internal meetings within the Gelora Party is still limited.The Gelora Party must improve the image of party institutions more than increasing the image of legislative candidates.

Table 2 .
Popularity of New Political Parties Ahead of the 2024 Election Source: Processed by Researchers (2023) from politics rmol.id(2023)