Government’s Position on Five Crucial Issues in the Elections Law Bill

At the end of the plenary meeting session on the new Elections Law Bill at the House of Parliament, Indonesian government, represented by the Minister of Home Affairs, Tjahjo Kumolo, expresses government’s position on five crucial issues on the Bill. Government has changed its position regarding two issues, while maintaining its previous position on three other issues.

On the issue of presidential threshold, the government is still maintaining its position to implement 20 percent of parliamentary seats for presidential threshold. Tjahjo asserts that 20 percent presidential threshold will guarantee that the winning candidate in the election is voted by at least 50 percent of the population and at least by 20 percent of voters in every province.

“We insist to implement this policy because it is the best option in our view,” says Tjahjo (07/13).

The government also insists not to alter the parliamentary seats allocation per electoral area. Therefore, the government prefer the current allocation, which is 3 to 10 seats for the National Parliament and 3 to 12 seats for Local Parliaments.

“We don’t want to change the electoral delimitation drastically. That’s why we opted to maintain the current allocation,” says Tjahjo.

Meanwhile, the government change their position on three issues: first, the government now prefer to implement Modified Saint Lague as vote-to-seat conversion method (previously the government prefer Pure Saint Lague method). Second, the government is now agree to impement 4 percent parliamentary threshold. And third, the government is now agree to implement open-list proportional system as the elections system.