Jakarta. House of Representatives Deputy Speaker Sufmi Dasco Ahmad said a proposed 5% parliamentary threshold for the 2029 general election was not yet final, despite an initial agreement among political party leaders.

Dasco said a recent meeting between President Prabowo Subianto and several party leaders was merely a brainstorming session to prepare for deliberations on revisions to the 2017 Election Law.

“The meeting between the political party chairmen was merely a brainstorming session to prepare for discussions on the Election Law, which will later be conducted by factions in the House,” Dasco told reporters at the parliamentary complex in Senayan, Jakarta, on Thursday.

He said the bill was still in its early stages, with the initial discussions intended to help guide subsequent deliberations in the House.

Dasco stressed that the proposed parliamentary threshold was only one of several strategic issues to be addressed in the bill.

The House remains open to input from academics, constitutional law experts and civil society groups, he said.

“As this was an initial discussion, there were naturally no binding decisions. The outcomes of those discussions included what Sugiono had previously conveyed,” Dasco added.

Gerindra Party Secretary General Sugiono previously said the coalition had agreed to set the parliamentary threshold at 5% to make the 2029 election more effective and efficient.

“We agreed on that figure,” Sugiono said on Wednesday.

The agreement involved Gerindra and Golkar, which had previously advocated for a threshold above the current 4%, Sugiono said.

The parliamentary threshold is the minimum percentage of votes a political party must secure in a legislative election to qualify for seats in the House of Representatives. The system is intended to simplify the number of parties represented in parliament and support government stability.

The debate over changing the threshold has resurfaced following a Constitutional Court ruling that the existing 4% threshold used in the 2024 election must be revised before the 2029 election.

The court said a threshold that is too high risks excluding millions of votes cast for smaller parties that fail to qualify for parliamentary representation.

The proposed 5% threshold has therefore become a key point of debate among political parties, particularly over how to balance a more streamlined parliament with proportional and fair representation of voters.

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