Members Of DPR RI: Presidential Threshold 0 Percent Potentially Eliminates Election Simultaneous

JAKARTA - Member of Commission II of the DPR RI, Zulfikar Arse Sadikin, assessed that the discourse on reducing the presidential nomination threshold (PT) to 0 percent has the potential to eliminate the simultaneous nature of the legislative elections (pileg) and presidential elections (pilpres).

Zulfikar Arse Sadikin in Jakarta, Saturday, said that Law Number 7 of 2017 concerning General Elections regulates simultaneous elections which require that they be held within 1 day of voting, especially the one-round presidential election.

If the PT is 0 percent, according to him, it can make all parties have candidate pairs, even the presidential election has the potential to not complete one round because the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia requires the winner of the presidential election to get 50 percent of the votes plus one vote with a distribution of 20 percent from the number of provinces. "So, if the presidential threshold is 0 percent, there will be two rounds," said Zulfikar.

He explained that the purpose of the simultaneous elections was to overcome the division of government in the presidential and multi-party system adopted by Indonesia.

According to him, the simultaneous election aims to make the winner of the presidential election as well as the winner in the legislative election. "So, if the legislative and presidential elections are not held within 1 day of voting and not in one round, the purpose of simultaneous elections is not achieved," he said.

Zulfikar emphasized that the Golkar Party focuses on what it wants to achieve in the simultaneous elections so that the PT is a "bridge" to strengthen the presidential system adopted by the Indonesian people.

He argues that the amount of PT as regulated in the Election Law is 20 percent, theoretically the probability can produce 4-5 pairs of presidential/vice-presidential candidates. "If it appears, the public will be given space to have alternative candidates. When parties want to nominate a candidate pair, they will consider many things, such as the public vote and the figure to be nominated," he said as reported by Antara.

According to him, if you want to change the norms in the Election Law, you can revise it and submit a judicial review to the Constitutional Court.

He said that the DPR and the government as legislators had agreed that they would not revise the Election Law and this agreement was confirmed by issuing the Election Law Draft from the Priority National Legislation Program (Prolegnas).

"Several parties have submitted a judicial review to the Constitutional Court, we will see the results because the same thing has been done before. If the Constitutional Court grants the lawsuit, the legislators must respect and follow up. However, if not, all parties must respect it," said Zulfikar Arse Sadikit about elections and the presidential threshold.