The Difficulty of Lowering the Parliamentary Threshold Amidst the Interests of Large Parties

The discussion on changing the parliamentary threshold has resurfaced in line with the DPR’s plan to revise the Election Law. However, the effort to lower the threshold is not easy because it relates to the political interests of large parties in parliament. Former Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Mahfud MD said that the DPR would find it difficult to lower the size of the parliamentary threshold because the seat-owning parties are advantaged by votes wasted from smaller parties. ‘If this is to be discussed again now, perhaps it should be reduced; perhaps fighting with the DPR will not be easy. Because the DPR is controlled by seat-owning parties that also have an interest in gaining the overflow from wasted votes. They want that too,’ Mahfud said at the Parliamentary Threshold Seminar on Wednesday, 4 March 2026. This condition gives large parties an interest in maintaining a high threshold. Mahfud explained that in Indonesia’s constitutional system, the size of the parliamentary threshold is an open legal policy. In other words, there is no standard measure for what number is considered ideal to be included in the Election Law. ‘Elections use a threshold, and its magnitude is, in fact, an open legal policy. In other words, it is an open legal policy—political-legal policy. The number chosen is up to the DPR,’ he said, at the seminar cited from YouTube Osotvchannel. ‘In other words, there is no fixed size. If it were set at one percent, there would surely be protests. Because there used to be one percent in the second election in 2004,’ he said. Mahfud elaborated that the threshold had previously changed from 2 percent to 2.5 percent, then 3.5 percent, and now 4 percent as regulated in Law Number 7 of 2017 on Elections. However, the changes were more the result of political consensus than measured academic considerations. ‘Law is the consensus of its framers. Law is a product of the resultant, as the theory says. If the consensus is like that, then that is binding. But the consensus should be rational,’ he said. Mahfud also referenced proposals to raise the threshold to 7 percent as previously advocated by the NasDem Party.