Election bill compromise sought

Election bill compromise sought
Jakartapost, 30/10/2008

The House of Representatives has moved closer to a compromise to unanimously pass the presidential election bill on Wednesday, after nine of 10 factions agreed on the minimum percentage of House seats a party or coalition must win to be able to nominate its own presidential candidate.

Chairman of the Prosperous Justice Party's (PKS) House faction Mahfudz Siddiq said all factions but the National Mandate Party (PAN) had agreed on a threshold of 20 percent of House seats or 25 percent of popular votes to contest the presidential election.

"The possibility of the House unanimously endorsing the bill is 90 percent," he said on the sidelines of an inter-faction meeting Tuesday night.

The other sticking point is whether the elected president and vice president should be allowed to retain executive posts at their respective political parties. Mahfudz said the decision on the matter would be made prior to the House plenary Wednesday.

Legislators had been unable to agree on any of three proposed thresholds. The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and the Golkar Party, which together control 234 of the House's 550 seats, said a party must occupy at least 25 percent of seats at the House to be able to nominate a presidential candidate.

The PKS demanded the threshold be set at 20 percent of House seats or 25 percent of popular votes cast in the legislative election, while other parties, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party, opted for a lower threshold of 15 percent of House seats and 20 percent of popular votes.

"We want to make the presidential election simple and moderate," Mahfudz said.

Other legislators have said that if the threshold value is decided in a vote, many parties will return to their original, more extreme proposals, such as Golkar and the PDI-P's previous suggestion of 30 percent of House seats and many other smaller parties' proposals of 15 percent.

The PDI-P and the Golkar Party were the only parties that rejected an article requiring an elected president or vice president to resign from a party executive post.

The Golkar Party is now led by Vice President Jusuf Kalla. PDI-P leader Megawati Soekarnoputri did not relinquish her top post at the party when she served as the country's fourth president from 2001 and 2004.

Although political parties are not in favor of passing the bill in a vote, many factions have attempted to lobby support from other factions to endorse their proposals.

The Golkar and the PDI-P need one more major faction to ensure a majority in the vote.

The PDI-P is pushing for a high threshold to guarantee that only a maximum of three candidates can contest the presidential election. This would give Megawati a much better chance of winning the election in the first round.

With his only support coming from the Democratic Party, which has 57 seats at the House, President Yudhoyono needs to keep the threshold low to allow him to run for a second term without having to form a coalition with other parties. -- JP/Abdul Khalik