Constitutional Court Rejects Premature Challenge to Parliamentary Threshold Law
JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com – The Constitutional Court (MK) was unable to accept a petition for judicial review of Article 414(1) of Law Number 7 of 2017 concerning General Elections (Election Law).
“The Court’s decision declares that Petition Number 37/PUU-XXIV/2026 cannot be accepted,” stated MK Chief Justice Suhartoyo during a hearing on Monday, 2 March 2026.
Deputy Chief Justice Saldi Isra explained that at the time the petition was filed, the House of Representatives and government had not yet made amendments to Article 414(1) of the Election Law, as ordered by a previous MK decision.
Consequently, there was no amendment to Article 414(1) of the Election Law that formed the subject matter of this petition.
“Petition Number 37/PUU-XXIV/2026 is premature,” Saldi said.
Previously, Kawal Pemilu and Demokrasi (KPD) had filed a petition to challenge Article 414(1) of the Election Law concerning the parliamentary threshold.
Both groups emphasised that legal uncertainty arising from the absence of a maximum parliamentary threshold limit served as the primary basis for this petition, which emerged following Constitutional Court Decision 116/PUU-XXI/2023 issued on 29 February 2024.
Article 414(1) of the Election Law states: “Political Parties participating in General Elections must meet a minimum vote threshold of at least 4 per cent of the total valid votes cast nationally in order to be included in determining the allocation of House of Representatives seats.”
However, the petitioners argued that the MK decision did not establish a constitutional maximum limit on the parliamentary threshold.
The absence of such a maximum limit created genuine legal uncertainty because legislators possessed extremely wide discretion to raise the threshold without clear constitutional parameters.
The petitioners noted that there were discussions in parliament whereby the majority of political parties did not wish to lower the parliamentary threshold. Some parties even wanted to maintain the 4 per cent threshold or raise it to 5, 7, or even 8 per cent.
Rather than lowering the parliamentary threshold, these discussions emerged, prompting the petitioners to file this judicial review petition with the MK.
According to the petitioners, the parliamentary threshold should not exceed 2.5 per cent.
Therefore, in their petition, the petitioners asked the Court to declare that Article 414(1) of the Election Law, as interpreted in MK Decision Number 116/PUU-XXI/2023, is conditionally constitutional and shall apply to the 2029 House of Representatives elections and subsequent elections, provided that amendments are made to the parliamentary threshold norms and that the specific figure or percentage of the parliamentary threshold does not exceed 2.5 per cent.