P

erhaps our founding fathers could never have imagined the complicated procedure a citizen must go through to contest presidential elections today. They drafted the 1945 Constitution in a modest but sincere way so as to give everyone an equal right and chance to assume the top executive post.

The House of Representatives and the government overhauled the rules of the game when endorsing the presidential election bill in 2008. Presidential Election Law No. 42/2008 restricts the race to candidates nominated by political parties or a coalition of parties that have 20 percent of House seats or 25 percent of the popular vote.

To many, at least chief patron of the Muslim-based Crescent Star Party (PBB) Yusril Ihza Mahendra, the threshold has deprived Indonesian citizens of their constitutional right. Maybe it has, too, killed the dream of every child who wishes to one day become president.

Yusril says that the threshold amounts to a conspiracy among major parties to keep the struggle for power to themselves. The constitutional law professor, a former minister under three different presidents, is challenging the law at the Constitutional Court because he knows his party stands a slim chance of fulfilling the threshold needed to nominate him as presidential candidate in 2014.

Regardless of his political motive, however, Yusril'€™s argument represents the logic of people who have faith in democracy that no party, including the state, can seize their rights from them.

The House has no other choice but to maintain the status quo after failing to finish deliberating the draft revision of the 2008 law on time, at the expense of some factions that asked for revocation of the threshold altogether. The judicial review Yusril has filed is therefore the most viable effort to change the presidential election rules, after three previous attempts to remove the threshold, including one by Yusril, failed.

The court battle will show the public whether the presidential election lives up to its original spirit, which is open to all. There are indeed certain qualifications a presidential candidate has to meet, but they should serve as no more than technical and competency screenings.

A ruling from the Constitutional Court in favor of the plaintiff would throw the presidential race wide open as all the 12 parties contesting the legislative election in April 2014 would be eligible to nominate their own candidates. If the motion is rejected, the election will only see old faces '€” literally '€” square off for the presidency. Worse, alternative and young candidates, such as Jakarta Governor Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo, could be denied a chance to run.

The presidential threshold is a rule that defies the founding election principles of fairness and justice.

Equally unjust and unfair is the restriction imposed on independent candidates the People'€™s Consultative Assembly endorsed when amending the Constitution nearly a decade ago. Their shortsightedness has spoken for itself now that political parties have proven unable to groom national leaders; they simply produce corrupt officials.