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House insists on raising electoral threshold
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Push and pull: People move boxes of ballots sent in from the districts following the 2019 presidential and legislative elections at the general elections commission office in Magelang, Central Java. (Antara/Anis Efizudin)
T
he House of Representatives is standing firm on its plan to raise the electoral threshold in 2024 despite concerns that the move would result in wasted votes and a loss of political representation, a lawmaker has said.
The House’s plan to raise the threshold is laid out in a bill to revise the 2017 General Elections Law. The bill stipulates that political parties must gain 7 percent of the national vote to acquire seats in the House, compared with the 4 percent of the national vote stated in the 2017 law.
Raising the threshold would simplify the country’s multiparty system, which in turn could strengthen the presidential system, as mandated by the Constitution, said deputy chairman of House Commission II overseeing home affairs Saan Mustopa from the NasDem party.
Saan said the House, however, also left open the possibility of adopting a threshold lower than 7 percent but higher than 4 percent depending on the result of future deliberation at the House.
He did not mention whether the political parties that control small numbers of seats in the House, namely the Democratic Party, the National Mandate Party and the United Development Party (PPP), had agreed with the draft after opposing the higher threshold in June. The three parties previously argued that the plan would weaken their chances of gaining representation in the House in 2024.
“We will not maintain the 4 percent threshold, or even lower it to below 4 percent. But there’s still a possibility that the threshold may be lower than the proposed 7 percent,” Saan said on Tuesday.
He said that Commission II had submitted the draft bill to the House’s legislative body (Baleg) in September for further deliberation, before it would be brought to the plenary session sometime next year.
