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LSI announces quick count result, SBY's party leads
The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Fri, 04/10/2009 1:47 PM | National
The Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) announced Friday its Legislative Election quick count result that placed incumbent Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party first.
In its press release LSI announce that the Democratic Party leads with 20.48 percent votes, leaving a close race between second place Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) with 14.33 percent and third place Golkar Party with 13.95 percent votes.
Falling behind the top three were the Prospereous Justice Party (PKS) with 7.85 percent votes, the National Mandate Party (PAN) 5.72 percent, the United Development Party (PPP) 5.24 percent, the National Awakening Party (PKB) 5.12 percent, the Indonesian Great Movement Party (Gerindra) 4.59 percent and the National Conscience Party (Hanura) with 3.78 percent votes.
“Only those nine party made throught the parliamentary threshold,” said LSI executive director Saiful Mujani.
The result fulfills previous prediction by a number of surveys that there would be only nine parties will get seats at the House of Representatives in Jakarta.
The rest of the the contesting parties, 38 in total (44 in Aceh including local parties), did not even pass the 2.5 percent parliamentary threshold and will not have legislators at the House or be able to compete in the 2014 polls.
Saiful said the result used data from 2096 polling stations, out of a total of more than 530,000 polling stations, across the nation. The were still data waiting to be send from several stations in Papua due to communication problem.
“But the random quality of these samples reach 99.57 percent, meaning it should reflect the real counting,” he said.
The samples were chosen through combination method of stratified cluster random sampling. LSI rated its margin of error at 0.9 percent. (dre)
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Kbkale — Sun, 04/12/2009 - 1:33am
All parties that won more than 5% of total vote viz. Democratic Party, PDI-P, Golkar, PKS, PAN, PPP and PKB should be allowed to field candidates for the Presidential election without any need of coalition as suggested by me in my letter published in jakarta Post of 7th April 2009.
K B Kale, Jakarta presently visiting USA.
John Hargreaves (not verified) — Fri, 04/10/2009 - 3:34pm
Why will parties which won less than 2.5% of the vote not be allowed to compete again in the polls in 2014?
According to quick count results, these small parties carry the hopes of 15 to 20% of voters.
How can the big parties make rules that systematically exclude nearly a fifth of the electorate from representation?
Indonesia needs small parties to represent the interests of followers of minority religions, of those concerned with the environment, labor or other special issues and to provide a hope of renewal and innovation.
But majority Muslims apparently feel that only they deserve the right to retain their own established political parties.
Perhaps more significantly, many legislators retain the old Suhartoist mentality. They do not want the hard work of actually fulfilling people's aspirations. They would rather crush them.
Instead of combating the rise of attractive alternatives to themselves by struggling hard for the people, they would rather just abolish as many of the alternatives as possible. "So twenty million people voted for those small parties? Let's make sure they vote for us next time- by making sure they don't have any choice!"
Fortunately, up to now they have not entirely succeeded in preventing new parties from establishing a firm foundation. If they had, then Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono would not have been able to set up the Democratic Party to carry him to the presidency. And Indonesia might not have made the progress it has.
It is time to abandon the old Suhartoist myth that reducing the number of parties is a sign of progress.
Small parties may be a source of competition to the large parties, but there is no evidence that they are a source of instability. As long as they are not demanding public funds, anyone should have the right to found and sustain a political party.
The one drawback of the small parties is that ballot papers become unwieldy.
But this problem will disappear anyway if legislators adopt a more effective electoral system. For example, they could divide the country into 300 single-member constituencies. Votes of losing candidates in each constituency could be pooled according to party and the remaining DPR seats distributed proportionally. The districts for local council elections could be similarly rationalised.
Whatever the future changes to the electoral system, they should be designed to ensure the best possible representation of the people's demands and interests, not to eliminate rivals in order to shield legislators from the inconvenience of having to prove themselves competent and worthy of reelection.