Ridwan Max Sijabat, Jakarta – As the House's debate on the general elections bill heats up, two parties want the electoral threshold be upped to 5 percent from the current level of 2.5 percent.

Legislators from the Golkar Party and Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) proposed the increase, which came after a House of Representatives plenary meeting in April, when parties inched closer to a compromise threshold of 3 percent.

Both parties said the proposal was based on a long study and political analysis and promised to continue to lobby smaller parties to agree to a compromise.

"It is impossible for Indonesia to treat legislative elections as a free market that allows all parties to compete and to send their representatives to the legislature," Puan Maharani, the PDI-P's leader in the House, said on Friday.

"We should learn from the last three general elections that the more parties there are, the more chaotic the elections will be, the more confused voters will be, the more factions will appear in the legislature and the more ineffective the government will be," Puan added.

Ignatius Mulyono, the chairs of the House's committee revising the bill, and Ali Wongso Sinaga of the Golkar faction, agreed that both parties would court smaller parties to support the 5 percent solution.

Smaller parties, including unregistered parties outside the House, and pro-democracy NGOs have opposed a higher threshold.

At the plenary meeting, five smaller House parties – including the United Development Party (PPP), the National Mandate Party, the National Awakening Party, the People's Conscience Party (Hanura) and the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) – proposed maintaining the 2.5 percent threshold, while the Democratic Party proposed a 4 percent threshold and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) backed an increase to 3 to 4 percent.

Hadar N. Gumay, the executive director of the Center for Electoral Reform (Cetro), warned big parties against attempting to monopolize political power, saying it was not the right time to impose a higher electoral threshold, which he said would counter pluralism.

"The government's ineffectiveness has little to do with the multiparty system and more to do with national leadership," he said.

Senior Golkar politician and former House speaker Akbar Tandjung said on Friday that a simpler political party system would lead to a more effective presidential system.

"Ideally there should be no more than five or six political parties in Indonesia," Akbar said at a seminar at the PPP's national headquarters. "I believe that two Islamic parties in Indonesia is enough: one to represent traditional Islamic groups, and the other to represent modern Islam," Akbar said.

He added that there should be only two nationalist parties while leaving room for increased representation.

"There should also be room for other groups. Let's say the Christian groups want to establish a political party to accommodate their voice, we should let them," Akbar said. "The political elites should realize that this is the best for the whole nation."

House Deputy Speaker and PDI-P politician Pramono Anung said a higher electoral threshold for the 2014 elections would be ideal.

Twenty-nine of 38 political parties standing in the 2009 election failed to meet the threshold required for House representation. "It should be higher, either three or four percent or whatever that the House decides on," Pramono said.

Syamsuddin Haris, a political analyst at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, said, "It would be hard to establish democratic consolidation if every instance of political dissatisfaction leads to the establishment of new political parties." (mim)