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Jakarta. The ruling Democratic Party has softened its stance on a proposed increase in the legislative threshold following pleas from smaller parties, saying that doubling the threshold is not necessary as long as it is raised.

Saan Mustopha, the Democratic Party’s deputy secretary general, said the party was only seeking an increase from the current threshold of 2.5 percent, and that the 5 percent figure being bandied about was not its final target.

“Five percent is a ceiling figure,” he said on Friday. “We’ll gladly settle for a lower figure, just as long as it’s more than the present 2.5 percent.”

The legislative threshold is the minimum number of votes needed by a party to clinch a seat in the House of Representatives.

Saan was speaking a day after a host of smaller parties in the ruling coalition called on the Democrats to reconsider their support for a higher threshold

The country’s four largest parties have pushed for an increase to the legislative threshold, which they say is the only viable option for reducing the number of parties in the House and streamlining the legislative process.

Democratic Party chairman Anas Urbaningrum previously said the party would introduce several amendments to the 2008 Elections Law in order to trim the legislative fat, including doubling the threshold, tightening pre-poll requirements for parties and slashing the number of seats per constituency.

Smaller parties have said that these restrictions will harm democracy, while a senior official at the National Awakening Party (PKB) warned that they would create a hostile political environment that could be dangerous for the government.

Saan, however, said smaller parties should view the move as an effort to improve the political climate and the quality of the legislative process.

Along with the Democrats, the other major parties backing an increase are Golkar and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), both members of the ruling coalition, as well as the main opposition party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).

These four parties control 407 of the 560 seats at the House.

On Friday, Golkar’s secretary general, Idrus Marham, played down concerns that increasing the legislative threshold would spell the end of smaller parties at the House.

He said the Democrats were a fledgling party when the threshold was introduced, in the 2004 general elections.

“The Democrats weren’t all that big back then, but they still made it,” Idrus said. “Meanwhile, who’s to say that a party like Golkar won’t one day become a small party?”

He added that raising the threshold in time for the 2014 polls would be ideal.

The chairman of the Center for Electoral Reform (Cetro), Hadar Gumay, said that while the other major parties seemed to prefer an immediate increase in the threshold to 5 percent, they would likely agree to the compromise offered by the Democrats.

He added that they should also be open to the idea of smaller parties forming confederations to meet a higher threshold .

The big four parties have rejected the notion of political confederations, arguing that such entities are not recognized under the country’s political or electoral laws.

The idea of confederations was initially proposed by the National Mandate Party (PAN), which is also in the ruling coalition.