TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – Small parties are campaigning to reduce the electoral threshold for entering the legislature. There needs to be a change to the system of government.
EVERY time a general election is held, tens of millions of votes are nullified due to the parliamentary threshold requirement for parties to get into the House of Representatives (DPR). A legislative candidate who secures a sufficient number of votes cannot become a representative if their party fails to gather 4 percent of the total valid votes. Therefore, the current maneuvering by a number of small parties to lower the parliamentary threshold is understandable.
In the 2024 General Election, the parliamentary threshold rule resulted in approximately 17 million votes failing to be converted into seats in the DPR. Now, through the Joint Secretariat of the People’s Voice Sovereignty Movement led by Oesman Sapta Odang of the Hanura Party, these parties are striving to lower the threshold to 2 percent. This figure is considered fairer and more representative of the political diversity in Indonesia.
In theory, the presidential system in Indonesia does not need a high threshold. The president is directly elected by the people and is not dependent on holding a majority of votes in the legislature, as is the case in a parliamentary system. But without a parliamentary threshold, 45 parties secured seats in the DPR in the 1999 election. The advantage is that voters are truly represented at Senayan, but the disadvantage is that governments become weak.
In the 2004 general election, an electoral threshold of 2 percent was introduced as a requirement for parties to contest in the following election. It was only in 2009 that the parliamentary threshold was initiated, starting at 2.5 percent, before increasing to 3.5 percent in 2014, and 4 percent in 2019. As a result, power was concentrated in an elite group of major parties. The space for public representation has narrowed. Politicians from large parties have essentially become both the players and the umpires who determine the fate of election participants.
During the administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), the DPR became unruly despite the fact that its function of control over the executive was strengthened. The DPR frequently obstructed government policies that were beneficial to the public. Unwilling to repeat the same situation, President Joko Widodo, who succeeded Yudhoyono, formed a bloated coalition. As a result, the DPR’s oversight function became blunted. Many high-cost programs, such as the construction of the new state capital (IKN) and the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway, were approved without debate.
The problem with Indonesian politics is not limited to the parliamentary threshold, but also the peculiar institutional design. A presidential system is suited to a nation with one or two parties, such as the United States. In Indonesia, the large number of parties makes the president electorally strong but politically fragile.
This state of affairs gives rise to political middlemen like DPR Deputy Speaker Sufmi Dasco Ahmad of the Gerindra Party. He serves as a bridge between the government and the DPR to ensure that the machine of power continues to run. But this smooth running also leads to a loss of opposition and to a weakening of the control of the government.
Therefore, simply lowering the parliamentary threshold is not the solution to restore the function of the DPR and simultaneously accommodate public participation in elections. One approach that could be tried is premier-presidentialism, like the model in France — a hybrid model where the president remains the head of state, while the government is run by a prime minister selected from the coalition party. Implementing this would, of course, require considerable courage to amend the constitution, while still adhering to the principle of maintaining a substantial democracy.
