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.

Small parties object to parliamentary threshold in bill

Dicky Christanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Wed, 12/22/2010 8:48 PM | National

The National Unity Forum (FPN), which comprises 17 small political parties with votes less then the parliamentary threshold, says it will file a judicial review should a new bill pass into law.

“We have serious issues with the bill. This kind of bill will destroy our democracy. We need to do something about it,” FPN secretary general Didik Supriyanto said Wednesday.

Didik said among the objections was a provision that states that the parliamentary threshold would be 2.5 percent in order for political parties to be able to seat a representative at the House of Representatives.

“It’s very obvious that the whole debate on the parliamentary threshold is aimed at preventing small parties like us from growing. We will ask the Constitutional Court to annul it,” he said.

He said another objection was a clause in the bill that states that parties must have branches in 75 percent of existing provinces.

“For a small party, this is almost impossible to implement,” he said.

As many as 16 small parties created the FPN in order to balance the country’s political party situation. Osman Sapta, chair of the Regional Unity Party (PPD), is the forum’s speaker while Didik, who is a member of the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), is the forum’s secretary-general.

The FPN has no representatives in the House but does have dozens of legislators in local government bodies.