Kompas -
August 12, 2010
Jakarta –
Concerns that if the parliamentary threshold is increased it will impact on the
number of valid votes that are wasted may be excessive because it will actually
reduce the number of valid votes lost.
"With
an increase in the PT (parliamentary threshold) to 5 percent, for example, the
number of political parties taking part in the elections will be less. The
difficulty of achieving the 5 percent target will make the small political
parties think twice before participating in the elections. The less political
parties that take part in the elections, the fewer the valid votes that will be
lost", said parliamentary watchdog Forum of Concerned Citizens for Indonesia's
Parliament (Formappi) Coordinator Sebastian Salang on Wednesday August 11.
Concerns
that increasing the parliamentary threshold to 5 percent will result in large
numbers of valid votes being squandered was raised by National Mandate Party
Chairperson Bima Arya Sugiarto when he spoke with Kompas yesterday.
According to Sugiarto, if the parliamentary threshold is set at 5 percent, the
potential number of wasted votes could be 32 million.
In the 2009
general elections, in which 38 political parties took part, only nine parties
passed the parliamentary threshold, and around 19 million valid votes were
wasted because people voted for the 19 parties that failed to pass the
threshold and were not represented in the national parliament.
According to
Salang, if the parliamentary threshold is increased to 5 percent and applied to
all regions, it will be very unlikely that as many as 12 political parties take
part in the elections. Accordingly, the number of wasted valid votes will not
be as high as the 2009 elections.
Within the
discourse that is developing at present, the three big political parties,
namely the Democrat Party, the Golkar Party and the Indonesian Democratic Party
of Struggle are indeed tending towards increasing the parliamentary threshold
to 5 percent.
United
Development Party Deputy General Secretary Romahurmuziy said that the proposed
5 percent increase to the parliamentary threshold is an anti-democratic move
and points to the further entrenchment of an oligarchy of power. If there is
indeed a desire to simplify the parties constitutionally, according to
Romahurmuziy, they might was well just increased the parliamentary threshold to
10 percent as is the case in Turkey. (why)
[Translated
by James Balowski.]
