Zero Percent Proposed, PDIP: Ideally 30 Percent Presidential Threshold

House of Representatives (VOI)

JAKARTA - The push for the presidential nomination threshold or presidential threshold to be changed to zero percent reaps the pros and cons.

Senior PDIP politician Hendrawan Supratikno disagrees with the proposal. Because according to him, the presidential threshold is important to implement so that the presidential system remains strong.

In fact, he said, PDIP wants the presidential threshold to be raised to 30 percent and the parliamentary threshold to 10 percent.

"The ideal is according to the general formula in countries with a presidential parliamentary threshold of 10 percent, and a presidential threshold of 30 percent, so that the presidential system goes hand in hand with a simple multi-party system," said Hendrawan to reporters, Wednesday, December 15.

PDIP, continued the member of Commission IX of the DPR, wants to strengthen the presidential system, not the parliamentary system. Therefore, said Hendrawan, presidential candidates must have sufficient support from political parties in parliament.

"The presidential system is only suitable for a simple multi-party system, between 2-5 parties. In Indonesia the number of parties is still too many. Consolidation through the parliamentary threshold has not succeeded in streamlining the number of parties," he explained.

Hendrawan emphasized that the presidential threshold is a middle way so that the tension between the presidential and multi-party systems can be harmonized or synergized.

"Otherwise, we will slip into the parliamentary system," said Hendrawan.

As is known, the presidential nomination threshold is regulated in Article 222 of Law Number 7 of 2017 concerning General Elections.

The article states that the presidential and vice presidential candidate pairs are proposed by a political party or coalition of political parties participating in the general election who meet the requirements for obtaining seats of at least 20 percent of the total seats in the DPR or obtaining 25 percent of the nationally valid votes in the previous election for members of the DPR.