The factions have failed to reach an agreement, especially on the four crucial matters, despite the parliament's mini factions having expressed their visions and lobbying that occurred prior to the election bill special committee meeting on WednesdayJakarta (ANTARA News) - The dead end discussions on the national election bill are to be decided in voting in the House of Representative`s plenary meeting on Thursday, April 12, an official said.
Chairman of the Special Committee for the Elections Bill, Arif Wibowo, said that the factions have failed to reach an agreement, especially on the four crucial matters, despite the parliament's mini factions having expressed their visions and lobbying that occurred prior to the election bill special committee meeting on Wednesday.
The four crucial matters disputed in the meeting were the electoral system, parliamentary threshold, seat allocation in each election area, and the votes counting procedures for parliamentary seats.
Views from all mini factions still differ on the four crucial matters in the election bill, Arif noted.
At the election bill special committee meeting that scheduled the hearing, mini factions and inter-faction lobbying still failed to reach an agreement.
Seven factions were openly supporting the open proportional system proposal, but only two factions support the closed proportional system, the Prosperous Justice Party faction and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle faction.
During the election seats allocation meeting on Monday, April 9, all factions originally agreed to assign three to 10 seats in each election area, but in a follow up meeting on Tuesday, April 10, the Golkar faction changed their proposal to three to 8 seats per area.
Meanwhile, differing views on the parliamentary threshold still exist, as the Golkar faction proposed four percent, while the Demokrat Party, Prosperous Justice Party, and Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle proposed a 3.5 percent threshold.
Five other factions proposed a three percent parliamentary threshold in the meeting, namely the factions of the United Development Party, National Mandate Party, National Awakening Party, Gerindra and Hanura.
Regarding the proposal for the vote count, as many as seven factions proposed a quota system, while only two factions are proposing using the devisor Webster system.
Vice Chairman of the Special Committee Elections Bill, I Gede Pasek Surdika, said that the proposals of the factions were brought to a plenary session and inter-faction leaders lobbying forum.
"If the lobbying stage still fails, then it will be decided through a voting mechanism," Pasek said.(*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2012
