Lilian Budianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

After a period of prolonged deliberation, the House of Representatives agreed late Thursday to compromise and set the vote division number (BPP) required for a candidate to win a legislative seat at 30 percent.

Roy B.B. Janis, a leader in the Renewed Democratic Party (PDP) praised the decision, saying the new BPP was an improvement on the old election law.

"The previous law failed to accommodate the interests of parties' chapter leaders because they would be placed at the bottom of the list. They had little chance of winning a House seat," said Roy at a discussion on the election bill at the House on Friday.

"With the 30 percent BPP, candidates at the bottom of the list will stand a chance," he added.

The BPP is calculated by dividing the number of votes a candidate receives by the number of legislative seats at stake in an electoral district.

The 2004 Election Law requires a candidate to have a BPP of 100 percent to secure a seat at the House. It means a candidate will only have a chance of securing a seat if he or she manages to obtain all of the vote or is ranked at the top of the party's candidate list.

Factions at the House deliberating the legislative election bill had been mostly divided between those proposing a 25 percent BPP and those proposing 35 percent.

Hadar Gumay of the Center for Electoral Reform said recently the lower the percentage of BPP, the higher the number of legislators that would be directly elected by people.

"A higher rate would mean that more legislative seats would go to candidates ranked on top or those who are the parties' loyalists," he said.

Ferry Mursyidan Baldan of the Golkar party faction told Friday's forum that the factions also agreed to enact an open proportional election system for the 2009 election.

With the agreement on mechanisms for elected legislative candidates and the election system, the factions will still be engaged in the deliberation of several other points in the election bill, including the number of House members, the size of electoral districts, vote-counting mechanisms and the threshold system.

According to Ferry, the factions are likely opt for a parliamentary threshold that would mark a shift from the 2004 electoral threshold as it would offer an opportunity for a new party to grow.

Under the 2004 electoral threshold system, any party failing to obtain 3 percent of the vote is not allowed to participate in the next election. Minor parties that failed to gather 3 percent of the vote in the 2004 election changed their names so that they would be deemed eligible to contest next year's elections.

"An electoral threshold will only produce recycled parties," said Ferry.

Moh. Chodarie, a political expert from survey group Indo Barometer, said that the parliamentary threshold would not only offer chances for new and small parties but would also allow a parliamentary simplification.

The deliberation of the bill had mostly met with deadlock as the factions insisted on their own proposals, causing the chairmen to extend the deadline for finalization of the election bill to Feb. 26 from the original date of Feb. 17.