Camelia Pasandaran & Febriamy Hutapea – A controversial measure aimed at bringing stability to Indonesia's notoriously chaotic multiparty system will likely succeed at limiting the number of parties that make it into the next House of Representatives. But it has raised fears that the inevitable challenge of parties and politicians that receive votes but find themselves frozen out of Senayan may simply breed more post-election chaos.

Parties failing to net 2.5 percent of the national vote in the legislative elections less than two weeks away will not gain representation in the House of Representatives, or DPR, according to the 2008 Election Law, even if their candidates manage to pull off a victory in their given districts. A similar 3 percent threshold existed in the 2004 legislative elections, limiting the number of parties that made it into the legislature that has served over the last five years.

This year, however, the threshold is but one of a slew of issues that have arisen in recent weeks and months that could form a basis for challenging the results of the elections.

"In 2004, 271 election disputes were filed with the Constitutional Court," said Patra Zen, chairperson of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation, or YLBHI. "I can imagine the number could double or even triple this year."

The threshold is particularly likely to serve as the basis for disputes following a series of recent Constitutional Court rulings. Some legislative candidates and 11 minor parties filed a petition against the threshold, but the court threw it out last month, arguing that the threshold was the product of a democratic process and therefore perfectly legal.

That ruling, however, came just days after the court issued a separate verdict that said candidates who garnered the most votes in a district would be awarded seats, rather than simply the candidates who were ranked highest on the list of the winning parties.

As a result, a candidate could conceivably win the most votes in a specific legislative district, and therefore be entitled to a House seat, but still be barred from the House because his or her party failed to meet the 2.5 percent threshold nationally.

Says Patra of the potential legal disputes: "If in 2004 they held hearings until evening, they are likely to meet until morning thanks to this threshold ruling. Those elderly judges could suffer a stroke."

The potential for the threshold to leave a large segment of the voting public without their choice of representatives in the House has a number of elections experts concerned.

Kevin Evans, a political analyst who runs the election monitoring Web site Pemilu Asia, said that up to 33 percent of all votes cast would be for candidates from parties that would not make it into the House. He said this could be a post-election issue, especially in the provinces of Bangka-Belitung and South Sulawesi and throughout eastern Indonesia, including restive Papua where voters feeling disenfranchised could exacerbate already heightened political tensions.

Jeffrey Winters, a professor of political science from Northwestern University in Illinois, likewise called the 2.5 percent threshold "dangerous," though he estimated the percentage of votes that would go to parties that end up gaining no representation in the House at 25 percent.

Not everyone thinks the threshold is a bad idea, however, and few would argue with the measure's central aim of bringing clarity and order to the political landscape that today includes 38 national parties.

Sulastio, director of Indonesia Parliamentary Center, acknowledged that the policy "has the potential" to create post-election conflicts and could prompt parties that failed to clear the bar for entry into the House to cry foul. But he insisted the point was not to limit the number of parties but to simplify decision-making in the legislature, which despite the higher 2004 threshold is nevertheless made up of 11 factions and 16 parties.

Lili Romli of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, or LIPI, played down the potential for conflict based on the measure.

There would be inevitable protests, Lili said, "but their number will be insignificant. And as long as they are outside of the legislature, their threat is insignificant."

Still, dealing with the potential fallout require serious preparation by authorities, Lili said, particularly given the short window of time to deal with election disputes. "The court has only 21 days to resolve election disputes, so it should really maximize its time," he said. "Delays in resolving disputes would affect next steps."

Irman Putra Sidin, a former expert adviser to the Constitutional Court, said he thought the threshold was a valuable measure. "The threshold of 2.5 percent is appropriate. Many countries use that system and we're just adopting it from overseas," he said.

Some have even gone a step further, like Andrinof Chaniago from the University of Indonesia, who proposed increasing the threshold to between 3 percent and 5 percent to help consolidate the political party landscape. "Seven big parties in the House like now is good. But it could be simpler," he said. "There could be four or five parties supporting the government and the rest in opposition. If it's that, there will be checks and balances."

Setting high standards for parties, Andrinof said, would help boost their quality. "If they only meet administrative requirements, they should just be considered registered parties," he said. "If the party has branches in provinces, they may join elections. And if they pass the threshold, they may sit in the legislature."