An item in The Straits Times (Singapore) from 3 June, 2010, reports that there is a proposal in the Indonesian legislature to raise the threshold for representation from 2.5% to 5%.
The article reports that there was a similar effort in 2008, but opposition from smaller parties stopped it.
In the last election, in 2009, only one party obtained over 20% of the seats. Despite the “low” threshold, 18% of votes were “wasted” because they were for parties too small to clear the threshold.
The next elections are in 2014.
(No link to the Straits Times article is available. I found it on Lexis Nexis.)
Plus, unlike in the United States, provincial parties are not allowed (with a special exception in the case of Aceh). And parties have to go through the re-registration process if they fail to make the cut at a national legislative election.
This, on top of the “anti-separatism” requirement that a registered party must have branches in at least half the provinces in the country; basically you need a lot of money to get started in Indonesian politics.
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