RI strives to find ideal number of parties

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The increasing number of political parties is a consequence of the democracy obtained after three decades of restriction, but in the long run only two or three of them will survive, observers said on Saturday.

Political analyst Fachry Ali said many people would still consider establishing new parties for the next few years while democracy here was still in its infancy.

"It is normal in the beginning of a democracy, but parties will be reduced to only the strongest by natural selection. I predict we will have only three parties in 20 years," Fachry told The Jakarta Post.

According to him, the three parties would represent nationalist, religious and globalized, middle-class, intellectual movements.

"That's the time when people use common sense in politics," he said.

During New Order administration, political parties were reduced to three by the government, with ruling party Golkar winning a majority vote in each of its six elections since 1971.

The first election in the reform era, in 1999, featured 48 political parties, but only 12 of them won seats in the House of Representatives. With the electoral threshold set at 2 percent, only six of them will be eligible for the 2004 elections.

Currently, over 200 parties have registered with the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights.

But analysts said a strict election bill, being discussed by legislators at the House, would likely reduce that number significantly.

Too many political parties would spark difficulties not only for a commission tasked with managing it all, but for the people on voting day.

Separately, Arbi Sanit said Indonesia should try to implement two-party system like the United States.

He said the system would help establish an effective government and strong control from the House.

"The system must be supported with a district election system," he said. "Without districts we will not be able to reduce the current number of parties."

Meanwhile, Syamsuddin Haris of the National Institute of Science agreed that the hundreds of political parties needed to merge together to win seats in the House.

However, he did not agree that there should be an ideal number for Indonesia political parties.

"There is no such ideal number for Indonesia regarding the political parties," he said.

According to Syamsuddin, the best way to reduce the number of political parties would be to implement strict criteria for them to participate in the 2004 election.