Ridwan Max Sijabat, Jakarta – The process of revising the 2008 Legislative Elections Law has come to a halt as factions in the House of Representatives continue to jockey to bolster their political fortunes in 2014, a senior lawmaker says.

Gandjar Pranowo, chairman of the House working committee deliberating revisions to the law, said the process had to be finished by April to avoid disrupting preparations for the next elections.

"All factions must leave their interests behind and make political compromises to settle the three major issues. Once the revision is endorsed into law, the General Elections Commission [KPU] and the Election Supervisory Body [Bawaslu] can prepare everything for the elections," Gandjar said on Wednesday.

The major issues Gandjar referred to are changes to the electoral system, the election dispute settlement process and the parliamentary threshold.

On revising the election dispute process, lawmakers from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) are proposing that ad-hoc courts be established at the district level to accelerate dispute resolution, which has currently been handled by the Constitutional Court in Jakarta.

Meanwhile, other factions, including the Golkar Party and the Democratic Party, are insisting on upholding the sole authority of the Constitutional Court to resolve disputes, as stipulated by the Constitution.

"The Constitutional Court in Jakarta is too far away from remote areas and is too costly when legislative and regional candidates and political parties have to file lawsuits against election results," Gandjar said, referring to stipulations in the law that election disputes must be settled inexpensively, expeditiously and fairly.

The PDI-P has also staked out a different position on selecting candidates, proposing a return to a previous practice that allowed party executive boards to determine which of the candidates on its slate of candidates would be awarded legislative seats.

A majority of lawmakers, mainly from smaller parties, want to keep the current "open system" which awards legislative seats to the candidates who win the most votes.

Taufik, a PDI-P lawmaker, said district-level ad-hoc courts would be needed if the open system was maintained to adjudicate disputes between candidates running for the same legislative seat.

Factions have also been at odds over the parliamentary threshold with major parties proposing a 4-to-5 percent threshold, while smaller parties have said an increase would only benefit large parties.