PDI-P agrees to 5 percent parliamentary threshold

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Mon, 12/27/2010 11:30 AM | National

The secretary of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), Bambang Wuryanto, has agreed to plans to make it harder for parties to gain House seats.

For it to develop efficiently, Indonesia with its large number of islands and large population needed less political parties, he said.

“The more parties in parliament, the harder it will be to lead Indonesia effectively,” Bambang said Sunday as quoted by tempointeraktif.com.

Ideally, Indonesia should only have six or seven parties, Bambang said.

However, PDI-P suggested the threshold on the percentage of votes required for the nomination of a presidential candidate remain between 15 – 20 percent.

Earlier, Golkar had suggested both the parliamentary and presidential thresholds be set at 5 percent, which would mean every party with members in parliament would be able to nominate a presidential and vice presidential candidate.

The suggestion was associated with the review of the 2008 Political Parties Law, which is scheduled to be carried out by the House of Representatives in 2011.