The Presidential Threshold Design in Indonesia’s Electoral System: In Search of “Win-Win Situation” Among Unfinished Debates

Abstract

This paper attempts to design a relevant presidential threshold system in Indonesia's presidential election as a "win-win situation" in achieving the desirable consolidated democracy. It is an unfinished debate, mainly among the Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs), political parties, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) activists, scholars, even society. Methodologically, it is qualitative research by applying the multiple case approach. To collect data, it applied a Focus Group Discussion (FGD) with the EMBs, political parties, NGOs, and scholars in five selected provinces and seven selected cities/regencies. The finding demonstrates that by employing a SWOT analysis, the negative presidential threshold trends dominate over the positive trends. The high percentage of the presidential threshold tends to have no compatibility with the embedded democracy framework. Thus, the removal of the application of the presidential threshold is appropriate for Indonesia's presidential election. As an alternative solution, the presidential candidate is nominated by political parties that succeeded in surpassing the parliamentary threshold with two prerequisites: a maximum of 4% for the parliamentary threshold and the absence of simultaneous elections.