Jakarta – Crescent Star Party chairman Malam Sambat Kaban on Thursday announced the direction the party will take to increase its share of seats in the 2014 general election.
"I hereby announce the Crescent Star Party (PBB) to be an Islamic freedom party," Kaban said. The new stance, he continued, was adopted in response to the country's divergence away from "the aspiration of freedoms prescribed in the 1945 Constitution".
"One of our concerns relates to our economic condition that has become increasingly ensnared in economic liberalism and capitalism, increasing the social and economic gap," he said.
He added that police and prosecutors acted on the basis of personal interest instead of on the principles of justice, fettering the country's law enforcement efforts.
"Law enforcement is not oriented toward the truth anymore but to whoever can afford to pay for it. This is one public secret that can no longer be ignored," he said.
According to him, the parliamentary threshold should not be increased in the next elections since the current 2.5 percent was already hard to fulfill. Increasing it, he added, would mean killing off smaller parties, "smothering" democracy.
"The law on elections must be tidied up," he said, adding that election laws should not be changed every time elections approached.
The party obtained only 1.9 percent of the popular vote in 2009, barring it from any seats at the House of Representatives.
A discourse on doubling the parliamentary threshold to 5 percent in the 2014 elections in the revised election law is strengthening. The main argument for the increase is to simplify the number of political parties for better democratic quality and government effectiveness.
Kaban added that the party would continue approaching other parties ahead of the 2014 parliamentary elections.
"We have built an alliance with the People's Conscience Party (Hanura) and other parties including the United Regional Party (PPD), the Ulema National Awakening Party (PKNU) and the National Labor Party (PNB)," he said.
Syamsuddin Haris, a political expert from the Indonesian Sciences Institute, said the party would continue to face difficulties meeting the parliamentary threshold given that those who won faced troubles keeping their seats.
"The change in platform is simply a political ruse that won't be of any use since it is only on paper without any real implementation," he told The Jakarta Post.
Increasing the parliamentary threshold would be beneficial as it would cut the number of parties at the House, he added. "Four or five parties is good," he said. "There's no harm in having a dominant party." (gzl)