REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- The bill on general elections will be finalized before the deadline in late April, 2017, Deputy Chairman of the House of Representatives (DPR) Fadli Zon declared. "The draft law of the general elections can be finished even in one day or one year if an agreement is reached. However, we are restricted to the deadline by the end of April, 2017," Fadli said in the Parliament building in Jakarta, Friday.

He acknowledged that factions in the House still had differences of opinion on several points in the bill. Fadli, who is from the Grindra Party, mentioned that the various House factions had differing opinions on the election system, parliamentary threshold and presidential threshold. "Major political parties want a high parliamentary threshold, the medium parties desire moderate threshold, while the smaller ones want smaller parliamentary threshold," Fadli added.

A lobbying forum must be held by leaders of political parties, yet, he added that Gerindra would stick to its initial position, notably, the presidential threshold should not be included in the law on general elections. Regarding the parliamentary threshold, Fadli stated his party would not question how much, but the ideal threshold was about 3.5 percent. "The elections system must be open because the Constitutional Court has decided that it must be open," he added.

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