Vice Chairman of Commission II of the House of Representatives of the NasDem Faction, Saan Mustopa said that there is an effort to lower the threshold for presidential nomination in Commission II from 20 percent of seats in the House of Representatives to 10 percent or 10 percent. The goal is not to cause sharp political and social polarization in society.
However, the House of Representatives parties do not want to if the presidential candidacy threshold is 0 percent. The reason is that too many candidates can be an issue.
"Twice the experience in the presidential election with limited presidential candidates, it does cause quite alarming social polarization. But if it's made 0 percent too, we still can't. There are still a lot of people who want to try. That is a matter of its own," saan concluded at the discussion "Discussing The Crucial Articles in the Electoral Bill", Tuesday (6/10).
Criticizing the parties in the House of Representatives who tend to regard many candidates as polemicists, The Executive Director of the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem), Khoirunnisa Nur Agustyati sees that voters deserve to be presented with many choices of presidential candidates with a variety of vision-missions and work programs. Also, political parties eligible for each election are given the right to submit presidential candidates because they have gone through a long and onerous process.
"To be a political party of election participants is also a long process. They have to be a political party with difficult conditions, then they have to qualify the political parties of the election participants as well," khoirunnisa said.
In line with Perludem, Cakra Wikara Indonesia (CWI) also supports the elimination of the presidential candidacy threshold. The ownership of the support of party members in large numbers shows that each political party of the election participants has sufficient legitimacy to carry out the presidential candidates.
"They've gone through a tough, hard, legitimate process. So, it can be said that they have a legitimate support base," said CWI Researcher Yolanda Panjaitan.
