Jakarta (ANTARA) - Indonesia's Constitutional Court decided to quash the threshold for presidential and vice presidential candidacy in future elections after finding Article 222 of Law No. 7 of 2017 on Election, which regulates the threshold, unconstitutional.
Chief Justice Suhartoyo read the verdict, which ruled in favor of the petitioners, at the court session here on Thursday. Two justices, Anwar Usman and Daniel Yusmic P. Foekh, dissented from the majority opinion.
Article 222 of the law, which the petitioners challenged, stipulates that a party or a coalition of parties must secure a minimum of 20 percent of parliamentary seats or 25 percent of the popular vote nationwide to nominate a candidate in the presidential election.
Justice Saldi Isra explained the court ruling by stating that Indonesia's Constitution grants political parties the right to nominate a presidential and vice-presidential candidate in elections.
In this context, the court viewed efforts to "simplify political parties" by utilizing the previous legislative elections results to limit presidential candidates amounted to an injustice to other political parties.
"By utilizing the result from the previous legislative election (to determine the presidential threshold), new political parties registered in the election will lose their constitutional rights to name a presidential-vice presidential candidate," Isra explained.
The justice stated that imposing a presidential threshold in elections does not effectively limit the number of political parties participating. Moreover, the threshold was set without strong rationality or justifiable calculation.
"It will be difficult for political parties to set up the threshold percentage without causing a prejudice of conflict of interest," he added.
Isra also said the court observed that political powers in Indonesia are inclined to prefer presidential elections "to have only two candidate pairs," which, without any remedy, can cause polarization that divides the nation.
Hence, the court decided to depart from its prior rulings regarding the presidential threshold with "strong and principled justifications" and now rules in favor of the petitioners' motion to abolish it.
The petitioners are students of Sunan Kalijaga Islamic State University in Yogyakarta -- Enika Maya Oktavia, Rizki Maulana Syafei, Faisal Nasirul Haq, and Tsalis Khoirul Fatna -- who all belong to the Faculty of Sharia and Law.
