Legal and Political Consequences of Threshold
Application in The General Election System in
Indonesia
Erga Yuhandra
1
, Haris Budiman
2
, Suwari Akhmaddhian
3
Faculty of Law, University of Kuningan, Indonesia
123
{erga.yuhandra@uniku.ac.id}
Abstract. General election is a mechanism of orderly circulation of power within a
country. In a representative democracy system, the circulation of power is determined by
elections. General elections are a concrete answer to people's participation in determining
leaders and representatives in state institutions and are a symbol of people's sovereignty
in a democratic system. It is feared that there is a threshold in the general election system
in Indonesia that can reduce the level of democracy from the freedom to choose the best
leader, besides that the existence of a threshold can reduce people's political aspirations.
The purpose of this research is to find out and examine the legal and political
consequences of the implementation of the threshold system in general elections in
Indonesia. The research method used in this research is the normative juridical approach
or also known as doctrinal law research or library research. In written legal normative
legal research, it is studied from various aspects such as aspects of theory, philosophy,
comparison, structure / composition, consistency, general explanation and explanation of
each article, and the binding strength of a law and the language used is legal language.
The use of doctrinal legal research is to find out whether and how the law regulates a
matter and how the rule of law is applied
Keywords: Law; Politics; Democracy; General Election.
1 Introduction
Democracy is a system that is able to rise phenomenally after being lost for thousands of
years. There is almost no system that can do this, especially since the rise of democracy has
become a big current sweeping the world so that it is now considered a popular system and is
considered the best in regulating the relationship between the people and the rulers [1]. Almost
no government system is willing to accept the label undemocratic, so there is almost no
government system that does not run general elections. For a number of countries that
implement or claim to be democratic countries (sovereignty of the people), elections are
considered as a symbol as well as the main measure of democracy. That is, the implementation
and results of the general elections are a reflection of the atmosphere of openness and
application of the basic values of democracy, in addition to the need for freedom of opinion
and association which are considered reflections of the opinions of citizens [2].
General elections are an important instrument in any democratic country that adheres to a
representative system, elections are a tool that functions to filter out politicians who will
represent and bring people's voices in representative institutions. So, for those who are elected
are considered as people or groups who have the ability or obligation to speak and act on
UNISET 2020, December 12, Kuningan, Indonesia
Copyright © 2021 EAI
DOI 10.4108/eai.12-12-2020.2305137