Grace Natalie Proposes Additional One Special Faction For Legislative Candidates Whose Party Doesn't Pass Parliament

Deputy Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI) Grace Natalie. (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - Deputy Chairman of the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI) Board of Trustees Grace Natalie, responded to the decision of the Constitutional Court which stated that the parliamentary threshold (PT) of 4 percent must be changed before the 2029 election.

Instead of supporting the Constitutional Court's decision, Grace actually proposed implementing the faction threshold as a substitute for PT in the election. In other sense, Grace suggested the formation of a special faction filled with legislative candidates who passed to the DPR but the party did not reach 4 percent.

"Instead of the parliamentary threshold, it is better to create a threshold faction. Namely the minimum need for votes to form one faction itself," said Grace via text message, Saturday, March 2. The formation of the faction, according to Grace, is also to accommodate the people's voices so that they are not wasted because the elected candidates or political parties do not pass to Parliament. For information, currently Grace, who is running as PSI candidate, gets the highest votes in the DKI Jakarta III electoral district with 41,705 votes. However, PSI is predicted not to qualify for Senayan because it only gets 3.13 percent of the 65.76 percent of the data entered the KPU's real count this afternoon.

"So the voices of the people are not wasted. However, for parties whose votes do not reach a certain percentage, they are combined into one faction," he explained.

Grace made the proposal because she reflected on the 2019 election. Where votes were wasted through the vote acquisition of almost 10 percent of all non-parliamentary parties.

"The sound of non-parliamentary parties combined is very significant reaching 9.79 percent (of the 2019 election)," he said.