The upcoming deliberations over an election bill could become an existential battle for smaller parties, with major parties, again, pushing for a higher electoral threshold.
The bill, which was submitted by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo earlier this month, retains the threshold for political parties to be able to get seats at the House of Representatives at 3.5 percent of the votes in the legislative election, as stipulated in prevailing legislation.
Big parties, however, said they believe that the bar should be set higher, at between 7 and 10 percent, saying the country would be more politically stable with fewer factions.
The United Development Party (PPP) and the Hanura Party have voiced their opposition to the plan.
“A higher threshold means more votes will be wasted,” PPP secretary-general Arsul Sani said. “Political stability has nothing to do with the number of factions at the House. It depends on the political support [given to the government].”
The PPP, the country’s oldest Islamic party, only received 6.5 percent of the popular vote in the 2014 legislative election.
Hanura, the smallest party at the House today, garnering only 5.26 percent of the votes in 2014, said raising the threshold was pointless, as it had been agreed upon when the legislative election was held before the presidential election.
“The next presidential and legislative elections will be held concurrently; there’s no reason to maintain the legislative threshold,” said Hanura executive Sarifudding Sudding.
Debate over the minimum amount of votes a party should win to get seats at the House, widely known as the “legislative threshold”, emerges every time the lawmakers deliberate election laws.
Indonesia embraces a multi-party system, but some politicians argued that the nation has too many political parties, which they say may cause political instability.
The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which gained 19 percent of the votes in the previous election, wants to increase the threshold to 10 percent.
The PDI-P, the Golkar Party and the Democratic Party were responsible for raising the threshold from the 2.5 percent that was stipulated in the 2008 legislative election law to the 3.5 percent in the 2011 revision of the same law.
“[The House] needs to simplify the number of factions for the sake of democracy and decision-making efficiency,” PDI-P faction deputy chairman Hendrawan Supratikno said. “There will always be trade-offs between efficiency and representation,” he added.
Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) executive director Titi Anggraini said the major parties’ proposal would actually be bad for democracy, as many people would not be represented if the parties they support failed to get seats at the House.
“If the House wants to improve the efficacy of governance and democracy, there should be a threshold to form a faction, for example 15 or 20 percent from the total seats at the legislature, so that the parties will be forced to form coalitions,” Titi said.
Nurul Fitri Ramadhani
The Jakarta Post
Sumber: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/10/29/small-parties-facing-yet-another-existential-battle.html