Most people said polls fair and free

JAKARTA (JP): More than 80 percent of Indonesian voters believe the June 7 general election proceeded in a fair and free manner, according to an electoral survey conducted one week after the polls.

Carried out by political experts of the University of Indonesia's School of Social and Political Sciences, supervised by American expert R. William Liddle, the study also found that 68 percent of the respondents said they felt "freer" during the balloting. Another 18.4 percent said they felt "far freer" on June 7 compared to the previous elections under the New Order regime, the survey revealed.

Another supervisor of the study, Valina Singka Subekti, said the survey was the first electoral study to be conducted in Indonesia since the 1955 elections. The study was conducted in cooperation with the Department of Political Sciences, Ohio State University, where Liddle is a professor.

"The study aimed to learn why a voter choose a party," said Valina. "It's important to understand voters' behavior and its consequences to the future of Indonesian democracy."

Valina's colleague, Eep Saefulloh Fatah, said the study involved 2,496 respondents from 312 villages in 26 provinces. Only East Timor was excluded from the study due to security reasons. Four female and four male respondents were involved in the study from each village.

"We could only analyze (the responses from) 2,488 respondents with a margin of error of two percent," said Eep.

Another team member, Saiful Mujani, who is a political doctorate candidate at the Ohio State University, said the 1999 polls was characterized by an absence of relation between a voter's preference and his or her religious, social and ethnic background.

He pointed out how the majority of voters were Muslims but the Islamic parties were defeated. "Parties that fared better were "old" ones like Golkar and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan)," he said.

"A simple conclusion is that Indonesian voters are very partisan, either to a party or to its leader," Saiful said admitting the team could not agree on which factor played a more important role.

Another team member, Sri Budi Eko Wardani, said only 2.6 percent of voters felt that there were no changes in the June polls, as opposed to the 86.4 percent who reported feeling a greater sense of freedom.

Sri said 37 percent of the voters were against the military's involvement in the administration, compared to 11.5 percent who supported military involvement. Another 13.8 percent "were not sure" while 25.8 percent said they could "tolerate" military involvement.

"We have to be aware of voters who still tolerate the military's involvement in government," Sri said.

"It's also interesting because 26 percent considered the (32 years of) Soeharto's regime 'good', 24.1 percent said they felt 'neutral' about it, 21.2 percent thought it was 'bad' and another 6.5 percent said the regime was 'very bad'," she said. (05)