Jakarta – The Constitutional Court on Tuesday issued a ruling to abolish the threshold for political parties or coalitions of parties to be able to nominate candidates for local heads in the November regional head election, a ruling which activists hailed as a win for democracy.
In response to a petition filed by two small political parties, the Labor Party and Gelora Party, the court ruled that the 20 percent threshold of legislative seats in the regional council or 25 percent of the popular vote would not be applicable in the November regional election.
In place of the stipulation, the court in a session presided over by Chief Justice Suhartoyo applied a new popular vote threshold based on the total number of eligible voters.
"For a province with the number of eligible voters between 6 million and 12 million, a political party or coalition of political parties needs to gather 7.5 percent of the popular vote," the court ruled.
For a province with more than 12 million eligible voters, a political party or coalition of parties needs only 6 percent of the popular vote before it can nominate a candidate in the local election.
Pro-democracy activists hailed the ruling saying that it could deal a blow to efforts of the Onward Indonesia Coalition (KIM) to cobble together a broad coalition to quash opposition candidates in the upcoming election.
Titi Anggraini of the Perludem election watchdog outfit said the ruling could encourage healthy competition in the upcoming local election.
"Bravo MK [Constitutional Court]! Now the requirement to nominate a candidate in local election is the same with that of independent candidates. The MK is great," Titi posted in a tweet posted on the X social media platform.
Titi said that the verdict could give opposition candidates like Anies Baswedan a fighting chance in Jakarta gubernatorial election.
One day before the Constitutional Court verdict, a coalition of 12 political parties announced their backing of the gubernatorial bid of Ridwan Kamil in the Jakarta gubernatorial election in an attempt to block Anies' reelection bid.