Mardani Ali Sera: PSI's Proposal Regarding Threshold Factions Doesn't Make Sense

PKS DPP chairman Mardani Ali Sera responded to the suggestion of PSI Deputy Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Grace Natalie to form a special faction for legislative candidates whose party did not pass the parliamentary threshold or the 4 percent Parliamentary Threshold.

JAKARTA - PKS DPP chairman Mardani Ali Sera responded to the suggestion of PSI Deputy Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Grace Natalie to form a special faction for legislative candidates whose party did not pass the parliamentary threshold or the 4 percent Parliamentary Threshold. According to Mardani, the option of the threshold faction does not make sense. He reminded that currently the implementation of the election refers to Law Number 7 of 2017. "It doesn't make sense. Currently using Law No. 7 of 2017," Mardani told reporters, Saturday, March 2. The member of Commission II of the DPR emphasized that the law does not currently provide room for the threshold faction option to accommodate legislative candidates who fail to qualify because the party vote acquisition is less than 4 percent. "For now, the law does not provide space for the threshold faction," said Mardani. Regarding the Constitutional Court's decision regarding the change in the parliamentary threshold of 4 percent, Mardani said it would be discussed further in the DPR to determine the ideal limit. After the Constitutional Court submitted a copy of the decision to the leadership of the DPR in the near future. "The Constitutional Court's decision also applies in 2029, and leaves it to the makers of the Law, DPR and the Government to create new norms related to the amount of the threshold and the way for simple multi-party ID parties to be high in Indonesia," said the legislator for the DKI Jakarta electoral district. Previously, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI) Grace Natalie, responded to the decision of the Constitutional Court which stated that the parliamentary threshold (PT) of 4 percent had to be changed before the 2029 election. Instead of supporting the Constitutional Court's decision, Grace actually proposed applying the faction threshold as a substitute for PT in the election. In another sense, Grace proposed 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 voice to form one faction itself," Grace said via text message, Saturday, March 2.

The formation of these factions, according to Grace, is also to accommodate the voices of the people so that they are not wasted because the elected candidates or political parties do not qualify for Parliament. For information, Grace, who is currently running as a PSI candidate, received 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 in 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 he 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 when combined is very significant reaching 9.79 percent (2019 election)," he said.