Gerindra, PAN, PKS and Democratic Party members walk out before a scheduled vote on the election bill in the 32nd plenary meeting of meeting period V of 2016-2017 at the House Complex in Senayan, Jakarta, on Thursday (20/7).
JAKARTA, KOMPAS – Through a voting process in the early hours of Friday (21/7), the House of Representatives plenary session arrived at the decision that the presidential nomination threshold will be 20 percent of House seats or 25 percent of popular votes. However, the decision was made with four out of the 10 House factions absent.
The four factions that refused to participate in the meeting to decide the presidential nomination threshold were Gerindra Party, the Democratic Party, the National Mandate Party (PAN) and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS).
House members of the four factions, except for House Deputy Speaker Fahri Hamzah from the PKS faction, left the plenary session at midnight on Thursday. After the four factions had left the room, House Speaker Setya Novanto, who replaced Fadli Zon in leading the session, then asked for the approval of the remaining participants for the election bill.
The session had discussed the bill’s five contentious provisions, of which the threshold for parties or a coalition of parties to field a presidential pair was the primary subject. Ultimately, the decision was to retain the current presidential nomination threshold of 20 percent of House seats or 25 percent of national votes.
However, the decision could be taken to the Constitutional Court (MK) for judicial review. Several groups, such as new political parties, academicians and election observers, have vowed to file a judicial review if a threshold was applied.
In anticipation of a possible judicial review, Constitutional Court chief justice Arief Hidayat said that court researchers had already compiled materials related to the election bill.
The researchers, who work under the court’s secretariat general, is one of the mechanisms the court has installed to speed up the judicial review process, as well as to maintain and even improve the quality of the decisions made by the institution.
Election phases
General Election Commission (KPU) member Pramono Ubaid Tanthowi said that the presidential campaign period for the 2019 election would start in mid-2018. Therefore, if a judicial review of presidential nomination threshold was filed with the Constitutional Court, it was hoped that the court could make its decision before then, so that it would not disrupt the electoral process of nominating a presidential candidate.
At present, what is worrying the KPU more is if there was to be a judicial review on the provision on verifying political parties.
The verification of political parties is the initial phase of the 2019 election and will start in September 2017. In the newly approved bill, only new political parties need to undergo verification. Political parties that were verified ahead of the 2014 election will not need to be verified again.
KPU chairman Arief Budian said that if the Constitutional Court decided that both new and old parties needed to be verified, then it would change everything. “That would change the budget structure and the personnel assigned to the field. These matters cannot be decided by the KPU alone. We need to coordinate with the Finance Ministry. These things will need decisions from other institutions, it is impossible to predict when they will be finished,” Arief said.
The presidential nomination threshold has been the most difficult matter to agree upon in the nine months of deliberation. The voting last night, which started just before midnight, also witnessed a lengthy debate.
The voting was done in stages, with the first stage to decide whether the voting would take place at midnight Thursday or next Monday.
The second stage concerned the package options on the bill, which boiled down to a choice between Package A or B. The difference between the two lay only in the presidential nomination threshold and the votes-to-seats conversion method. Package A offered a presidential nomination threshold of 20 percent of House seats or 25 percent of popular votes and the Pure Sainte-Lague conversion method, while Package B offered the elimination of the presidential nomination threshold and the current Hare Quota conversion method.
The packages took the same stance on the three other provisions: a 4 percent electoral threshold, an open-list polling system (House members elected by the most votes), and 3-10 legislative seats per electoral district.
In the first stage of voting, 322 House members of the PDI-P, Golkar Party, National Awakening Party (PKB), United Development Party (PPP), Nasdem and Hanura factions voted for the meeting to be held at midnight on Thursday.
Meanwhile, 217 House members of the Gerindra Party, Democratic Party, the National Mandate Party (PAN) and PKS factions wanted the vote to be held next Monday.
Before the second stage started, Yandri Susanto from PAN said that while he respected the deliberation process, PAN had declared that it would not take part in the voting for the presidential nomination threshold. PAN also relinquished any responsibility for the results of the voting.
The same stance was declared by Ahmad Muzani, the Gerindra spokesperson. Meanwhile, Benny K Harman from the Democratic Party said that the presidential nomination threshold was a breach of a Constitutional Court ruling. For that reason, the Democratic Party initiated a walkout during the second stage of decision-making.
PKS faction spokesperson Al Muzzammil Yusuf said that his faction refused to take part in the second stage of voting.
