House, govt to discuss election bill
Dicky Christanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Tue, 07/19/2011 4:54 PM
The House of Representatives' plenary meeting has finally agreed to discuss the new General Election bill with the government representatives after making several improvements.
"We will discuss this bill with government representatives in the near future,"House deputy chief Pramono Anung told the plenary meeting on Tuesday.
The improvements include setting several digits as options for the parliamentary threshold.
Two large parties, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and the Golkar Party, for example, were in favor of using 5 percent as the new parliamentary threshold. This means that a party should garner 5 percent of national votes to win seats at the House of Representatives.
However, the Democratic Party has lowered its standard to 4 percent while five other mid-sized parties – the National Mandate Party (PAN), the National Awakening Party (PKB), the Justice Prosperous Party (PKS), the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) and the People's Conscience Party (Hanura) – preferred 2.5 to 3 percent as the new threshold at the upcoming general election.
