Hi MK, Dare To Decide Threshold For The President?

JAKARTA - Once again, the last gatekeeper of the constitution made the country's political world volatile. After 'losing' Gibran Rakabuming Raka as a vice presidential candidate, now the four percent parliamentary threshold is also eliminated. But do the Constitutional Court dare to apply the threshold to the term of office of the president?

Based on VOI records, the full sensational verdict from the constitutional court began with passing the presidential candidate age limit at the end of January 2024, four days ago the Constitutional Court removed the parliament's threshold of 4 percent.

Various kinds of responses related to the decision immediately appeared in the realm of social media. Starting from civilians who work as buzzers to political parties. One of them is the Deputy Chairperson of the MPR Ri, Hidayat Nur Wahid.

This senior politician from PKS said that as the last guardian of the constitution, the Constitutional Court must act fairly in accordance with the mandate of the basic law. He continued that the Constitutional Court should ask lawmakers, namely the government and the DPR, to implement the same thing in the current presidential threshold, which is 20 percent.

Hidayat also emphasized that the Constitutional Court's steps to correct lawmakers were deemed necessary so that the people's sovereignty and the quality of democracy in this country recovered and was better. "Two years ago, our party PKS filed a lawsuit with the theme of lowering the presidential threshold (middle presidential threshold) no longer 20 percent. However, our lawsuit was rejected by the Constitutional Court," said Hidayat Nur Wahid, Tuesday, March 5.

Hidayat added, with a presidential threshold below 20, the quality of Indonesia's democracy will be much healthier. The 20 percent presidential threshold is clearly unconstitutional.

There Are 3 Threshold Threshold Systems

Indonesia recognizes 3 threshold systems in general elections, namely electoral threshold, parliamentary threshold, and presidential threshold. In short, the threshold is the minimum threshold for votes that election participants must have in order to obtain certain rights in the election.

These rights include being participants in the next election, obtaining seats in parliament, and the right to propose pairs of presidential and vice presidential candidates in the next election. Is the presidential threshold?

Presidential threshold quoted from the book Dictionary for Popular Elections: Kosa Kata Umum, Experience of Indonesia and Other Countries written by Gotfridus Goris Seran is the threshold for votes that must be owned to be able to apply for presidential candidates.

The ideal way of calculating parliamentary thresholds uses the effective threshold formula created by Rein Taagepera, an Estonian political scientist. Based on the formula from Rein, the effective parliamentary threshold is at 1 percent. This value is obtained from the calculation of the average number of electoral regions, the number of electoral districts, and the number of seats in the last four elections.

Is It Appropriate For President Treshold To Be 20 Percent

Researcher and political observer from Trust Indonesia, Ahmat Fadli explained that the country of Indonesia is a country that adheres to a 20 percent presidential threshold (PT) system. With a benchmark of 20 percent for PT that big, it is unfortunate, if a democratic country as big as Indonesia makes the parameters for the quality of its presidential candidates only determined by the size of political party support for the presidential candidate,

Based on the results of the mandate of the 1945 Constitution and the Election Law, the pair of presidential and vice-presidential candidates who received more than fifty percent of the vote in the general election with at least twenty percent of the votes in each province spread across more than half the number of provinces in Indonesia, is the threshold practice that the constitution wants.

"This means that the determination of 20 percent as a requirement or threshold for presidential/vice-presidential candidacy does not have clear and strong arguments in the presidential system and in the constitution," said Achmad Fadli.

The threshold for presidential candidacy is no longer relevant to the implementation of elections since 2019 which was held simultaneously to elect the president and vice president as well as the legislature in the DPR. The votes from the legislative elections, which in the previous presidential election were used as a threshold for presidential candidacy, could no longer be held, because the DPR and Presidential Elections were held at the same time.

"If the 2024 election is considered severe, it is indeed the worst in the history of democracy in Indonesia. The reason is that there are no more legislative election results that can be used as a threshold as a requirement for the nomination of the president and vice president," he said.

The 20 percent presidential threshold for DPR seats or 25% of valid votes for national legislative elections began in the 2014 elections. And President Jokowi said he did not want the election rules to run backwards. Jokowi's statement emphasized that the purpose of implementing the presidential nomination threshold was to limit the number of pairs of presidential candidates in every election held.

"If the number of presidential candidate pairs is limited, the party who will benefit the most in this condition is President Jokowi as the incumbent. Moreover, President Jokowi holds political capital quite strongly. President Jokowi needs to recall the classic Indonesian political parable: nothing is certain in politics. In politics, what is certain is that uncertainty," he said.