With the provision on the presidential threshold within the newly passed election bill intact, predictions are that President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and his former rival in the 2014 presidential election, Prabowo Subianto, will face off against each other once again in 2019.

Pro-government political factions at the House of Representatives voted to maintain a minimum support requirement for a political party or an alliance of political parties to field presidential candidates in the bill after the opposition factions walked out of the House’s plenary meeting late on Thursday.

The much-debated bill, which now only awaits the President’s signature to become law, maintains the presidential threshold at 20 percent of House seats or 25 percent of the popular vote, practically forcing all parties to form alliances to be able to participate in the presidential election. In the 2014 election, no single party won more than 20 percent of the popular vote.

Only hours after the passing of the bill, the United Development Party (PPP) officially announced its support for Jokowi’s re-election in 2019, making it the fourth political party to endorse the former Surakarta mayor after the Golkar Party, the Hanura Party and the NasDem Party.

The four parties control 32 percent of the House seats.

“Our collaboration to support Pak Jokowi continues,” Golkar senior politician Agung Laksono said on Friday. “We hope that all of the parties [that will endorse Jokowi’s 2019 presidential ticket] will become even closer with the election bill approved.”

Parties supporting Jokowi have called on fellow coalition members to seal a political alliance as early as possible to establish a strong coalition that could safeguard Jokowi’s development agenda, which they believe is key to winning votes in the 2019 legislative elections.

As of now, Jokowi’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) has yet to officially announce its support for Jokowi’s re-election. Neither has the remaining two members of the ruling coalition: the National Awakening Party (PKB) and the National Mandate Party (PAN).

Two major opposition parties — the Gerindra Party and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) —are seeking to endorse Prabowo Subianto again in 2019. The two parties together control 20 percent of the House seats.

Gerindra has repeatedly stated that it would nominate Prabowo for the 2019 election even though Prabowo himself, who has run for president three times since 2004, has yet to announce his fourth attempt to clinch the position.

The other major opposition party, the Democratic Party, has not announced its presidential candidate for 2019, even though many believe that it is grooming Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, the son of party patron and former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, as its nominee.

The party only has 61 House seats, about 10 percent of the total, which makes it ineligible to field a candidate without forming a political alliance.

New and smaller parties such as the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI) and the United Indonesia Party (Perindo) have vowed to challenge the law in the Constitutional Court, arguing that the presidential threshold should be scrapped as they considered it to be unconstitutional.

“This is about justice for all. All parties participating in the elections should have the same rights,” said Perindo secretary-general Ahmad Rofiq.

If the court scraps the 20 and 25 percentages threshold, more candidates would likely join the race because political parties generally seek to nominate their own leaders, including PAN.

“It’s a must for PAN to endorse our chairman as a national leader if the opportunity is available,” PAN executive member Yandri Susanto said.

A political analyst of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank, Arya Fernandes, said that as the incumbent Jokowi already had the upper hand in the 2019 election, but the presidential threshold provision benefited him even more.

“He’s in a golden position. Small and medium parties will be more into him than his challenger because of his position as incumbent. Logically, they’ll think it’s better for them to endorse an incumbent than any newcomers. In all countries, also regional elections, incumbent candidates always have bigger chances to win,” Arya told The Jakarta Post.

The case would be different for Gerindra, which has pushed for the elimination of the presidential threshold.

Arya said that the 20 and 25 percentages threshold would make it difficult for the party to gather support and form a coalition because the political map could change at any time and small and middle sized parties tend to support the incumbent.

“The 20 and 25 threshold will make them try more to form a coalition,” he said.

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