Anita Rachman – The number of parties in the House of Representatives should be capped at five, according to a proponent of a measure designed to make it harder for smaller parties to get seats.

Ade Komaruddin, chairman of the Golkar Party's executive board, claimed on Tuesday that with no more than five parties in the legislature, it would give the public greater oversight of the House. The only way to achieve that, he said, would be by raising the legislative threshold.

"That's the road we need to take," Ade said. "The quality of the House cannot be separated from the threshold."

He argued that the lower the threshold, which is the minimum number of votes a party must receive in an election in order to be represented in the House, the more parties that would enter the House. "Now 70 percent of members of the House are unqualified. We shouldn't let there be a glut of parties in the House," he said.

The legislative threshold, currently at 2.5 percent, is the subject of heated debate among legislators. Golkar and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) want it doubled to 5 percent, while the ruling Democratic Party wants it at 4 percent.

Hadar Gumay, chairman of the Center for Electoral Reform (Cetro), said inefficiencies in the legislature should not be blamed on the number of parties.

"It's the legislators' attitudes that makes the House what it is today," he said. "Slashing the numbers of parties sitting at the House is not a solution to their problems."

He also pointed out that successive elections in the reform era had seen a dwindling number of parties reach the House. In 1999, 21 parties made it to the legislature, while in 2004, the number fell to 17. The most recent polls in 2009 whittled that number down to nine parties.

Middle- and small-sized parties have also argued against raising the threshold. Viva Yoga Muladi, from the National Mandate Party (PAN), said the current number of nine parties was ideal because it was representative of the nation's political diversity.