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AKARTA: Six government coalition political parties are set to hold meetings to settle their differences regarding the plan to raise the legislative threshold level as part of the revision to the 2008 legislative election law.

“We need to settle the differences of opinion within coalition parties as soon as possible so the bill can be passed into law by the end of March 2012,” Saan Mustofa, lawmaker from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party, said on Wednesday.

“We will begin holding meetings at the coalition’s joint secretariat this week to address the protracted issues,” he added.

The prolonged discussion on the threshold has created opposing blocs in the government’s coalition of political parties.

Four smaller 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 opposition’s People’s Conscience Party (Hanura) and the Great Indonesian Movement Party (Gerindra) to form the so-called “central axis”.

The government has proposed a legislative threshold of 4 percent for the 2014 polls while the central axis parties want 3 percent.

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