Labour Party Rejects Proposal to Raise Parliamentary Threshold to Over 4 Percent

A proposal to increase the parliamentary threshold has been met with resistance from several parties, both within and outside the parliament. The Labour Party is among those rejecting the proposal.

Labour Party President Said Iqbal stated that increasing the threshold to over 4 percent should be rejected because it goes against the constitutional principles outlined in a Constitutional Court ruling. “This proposal must be rejected,” said Said in a written statement on Thursday, February 26, 2026.

The Labour Party, he said, reminds the party factions in Senayan (the parliament building) that are currently discussing the revision of the Election Law to use Constitutional Court Decision Number 116/PUU-XXI/2023 as a reference for regulating the threshold.

In that ruling, according to Said, the Constitutional Court ordered the lawmakers to re-regulate the parliamentary threshold, by lowering it instead of increasing it. “If it is raised to over 4 percent, it violates morality, rationality, and tolerance,” he said.

Meanwhile, the NasDem Party is one of the parties proposing that the parliamentary threshold in the 2029 election be increased from 4 to 7 percent. NasDem Party politician Muhammad Rifqinizamy Karyasuda said that the increase would have a positive impact.

For example, he said, political parties will automatically be forced to improve themselves and strengthen their structure in order to gain votes in each contest.

He understands that the parliamentary threshold causes millions of votes to be wasted due to candidates or parties that do not pass. However, its removal is not the answer.

“The parliamentary threshold is still necessary; it is an inevitability to create institutionalization of political parties,” said the Chairman of Commission II of the DPR (House of Representatives).

The Constitutional Court in case number 116/PUU-XVIII/2023 decided to abolish the 4 percent parliamentary threshold stipulated in the Election Law.

In its legal consideration, the Court argued that the parliamentary threshold provision does not align with the principles of popular sovereignty, electoral justice, and violates the legal certainty guaranteed by the constitution.

The Court continued, that Article 414 paragraph (1) of the Election Law is conditionally constitutional to be applied in the 2029 Election and beyond, as long as it has been amended.

Contacted separately, Head of the Department of Politics and Social Change at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Arya Fernandes, said that there is no ideal number to determine the size of the parliamentary threshold.

This is because the threshold is generally determined based on political decisions, not mechanical calculations. He gave an example, if in the 2029 Election the threshold is made low with a figure of 1 percent, then the impact will be the creation of an extreme multi-party system which can have implications for legislative deadlocks and political instability in the DPR.

Meanwhile, he said, if the threshold is made higher than the current size, then the impact will be that the degree of representation and the high number of votes that are not converted into seats will be much greater.

He proposed that the threshold be lowered in two election cycles, namely 3.5 percent for 2029 and 3 percent for the next election. He gave an example, in the last election the use of a 3.5 percent threshold could reduce the number of wasted votes from 17 to 11 million.

“The reduction is expected to increase the degree of more inclusive representation,” said Arya.