PKB, expert protest increasing parliamentary threshold attempt

Jakarta, NU Online
National Awakening Party (PKB) lawmaker Ida Fauziyah and expert on general elections Hadar Gumay are protesting the recent proposal to increase the parliamentary threshold figure, saying that it will guarantee no improvement for the country’s democracy.

“I barely comprehend the recent proposal from the large parties, such as the Democratic Party and the Golkar Party, to increase the parliamentary threshold from the current 2.5 percent up to 5 percent in the 2014 general elections. Because if the goal is to improve the quality of political parties then by all means there are still many avenues to take,” Ida Fauziyah of the PKB told a discussion on Thursday.
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Ida said that the political party law, for example, had clearly stipulated stricter requirements in the form of verification for all political parties.

“The verification will oblige all parties, including the established ones, to pay more attention to their organizational readiness in the regions. This attempt is the blatant example of the attempt to improve the quality of political parties,” she was quoted by The Jakarta Post as saying.

Hadar Gumay of the Centre for Electoral Reform, who also attended the discussion, was in harmony with Ida, saying that increasing the parliamentary threshold figure would not automatically fix everything.

“If the number of the political parties has already been limited then who can guarantee that the government can improve its performance. There are still many other factors that need to be considered beside the parliamentary threshold,” he said.

A parliamentary threshold figure is a mandatory requirement for political parties to be able to place their representatives in the House of Representatives. The current parliamentary threshold is set at 2.5 percent, meaning that a political party should be able to achieve at least 2.5 percent of national votes in order to get a ticket to the House of Representatives.

Recently, some big political parties such as the Democratic Party and the Golkar Party proposed to increase the figure by up to 4 and 5 percent respectively over the sole reason to limit the number of political parties in the country. (dar)