T

he review of the 2008 Legislative Elections Law has created opposing blocs in the government’s coalition of political parties, which many saw as another challenge to its unity.

The four coalition parties, namely the National Awakening Party (PKB), the National Mandate Party (PAN), the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and the United Development Party (PPP), have grouped with the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura) and the Great Indonesian Movement Party (Gerindra) to form the so-called the “central axis”.

Lawmakers from the four parties — except those from the PKS — previously showed strong commitment to defend the government’s interests during numerous heated discussions at the House of Representatives.

As it comes to election regulations that will affect the parties’ future after the end of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s second term in office, the coalition made tough statements opposing the government.

The government has proposed a legislative threshold of 4 percent for the 2014 polls while the central axis parties want the threshold to be set at 3 percent, arguing that a drastic increase could jeopardize democracy.

Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party obviously supports government’s proposal, but its biggest ally, the Golkar Party, shares similar aspirations to the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which instead wants the threshold to be set at 5 percent.

PKB legislator Abdul Malik Haramain suggested that the coalition’s joint secretariat be disbanded.

“The secretariat was initially established to facilitate more intense communication between coalition parties, but it turns out to be only serving the interests of the bigger parties,” Abdul said on Thursday.

PPP secretary-general M. Romahurmuziy shared Abdul’s sentiment. “If the secretariat fails to settle this issue, I predict that it will not last through the end of 2012. Coalition parties would split,” he said.

Political observers agreed that the issue had created rifts among coalition parties and could be a “time-bomb” for the coalition.

Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) political observer Syamsuddin Haris said the outspoken politicians from the coalition parties were actually looking for a compromise by raising public awareness.

“I personally agree that the 3 percent threshold will be the most suitable for the 2014 elections, but establishing the central axis was, I think, unnecessary,” he said.

The top leader of each coalition party has signed a contract with President Yudhoyono that contained an agreement that the parties would support the President both in terms of government policy and political matters in the House.

Democratic Party senior lawmaker Jafar Hafsah, however, said that the threshold dispute had nothing to do with the coalition contracts. “The basic point stipulated in the contract was to support Yudhoyono’s administration until 2014.”

Speculation has emerged that Golkar and PDI-P’s insistence at a 5 percent legislative threshold was aimed at preventing Lt. Gen. (ret.) Prabowo Subianto, Gerindra’s chief patron, from running for president. The former Kostrad (Army Strategic Reserves) commander has been listed among the three most popular presidential candidates by recent surveys.

Gerindra acquired 4.46 percent of the vote in the 2009 election.

Hadar Nafiz Gumay of the Center for Electoral Reform said: “I saw moves from bigger parties to engineer the articles to kick smaller parties for the sake of efficient democracy.”