Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy

The Bill is the second of four political laws required for the 2009 general elections. The Political Party Bill was passed last December and the House will continue to discuss the two remaining bills on the Presidential Elections and the Composition of Legislative Bodies.

The new Bill was turned into law after a protracted debate on candidate selection, the threshold and the use of remainder votes in allocating seats.

Threshold

The threshold is now set on 2,5 percent, which is a step forward in comparison to the previous law. This stated an ‘indirect threshold’ which allowed parties with less than 2,5 percent of the votes to enter the Parliament, yet they were not allowed to run in following elections and thus to re-enter the Parliament. This led to a proliferation of parties and a fragmentation of the political landscape. The new Election Law puts an end to this political practice.

Voter’s preferences

Furthermore, a half-open proportional list-system comes into practice with the new law, as opposed to the previous closed proportional list-system. The preferences of voters have become more important, since the new law provides seats for candidates who win the most votes. If a candidate gains or surpasses 30 percent of the divisor, he or she will automatically get elected. In the previous situation, a candidate was only assured a seat if he or she received a 100 percent of the divisor.

Remainder of votes

The use of the remainder of the votes was the toughest issue deliberated in the House of Representatives. It was decided that the district-level seat allocation will use ‘large’ remainders (which exceed a certain percentage of the divisor), while ‘small’ remainders (below the percentage cut-off point of 30 percent) will accumulate at the provincial level. There was a difference of opinion between the parties; some parties were in favor of collecting the residual votes at the provincial level (Golkar, PDI-P and East-Java based PKB), as opposed to a number of (smaller) parties who would benefit from collecting residual votes from the district level (PPP, PAN, PD and PBR).

The new law is a step forward in terms of the institutionalization of the Indonesian democracy, as well as securing the manageability of elections.