Political parties unpopular with public
Kurniawan Hari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Major political parties contesting the 2004 general election have failed to woo support from poor people living in urban areas, according to a recent poll.
The survey, carried out by the Institute for Business Ethics Development Studies (LSPEU) on 2,995 respondents at random in six major cities, revealed that 26 percent were still thinking about the party they would vote for and 32 percent declined to disclose their preference.
"This means that political parties are unpopular among poor people in urban areas. The people have no enthusiasm for the parties," LSPEU director Fachry Ali told a media conference here on Wednesday.
Poor people were defined as those whose monthly expenditure was below Rp 1 million (US$119).
The lack of popularity was confirmed by the low percentage of respondents favoring any particular party.
Among the unpopular parties, the Golkar Party ranked first with support from 10.8 percent of respondents, followed by President Megawati Soekarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan), with 7.4 percent.
The National Awakening Party (PKB), National Mandate Party (PAN) and Vice President Hamzah Haz' United Development Party (PPP) came third, fourth and fifth respectively.
There was a significant change in party preference compared with the 1999 election, as 24.7 percent of respondents admitted to voting for PDI Perjuangan, 12.2 percent Golkar, 8.6 percent PKB, 6.8 percent PPP and 4.7 percent Muslim-based PPP.
Preference for parties was mostly influenced by respondents' assessment of party achievement (46.4 percent), followed by the party leadership factor (10.6 percent) and party programs and platforms (10.3 percent).
"Despite their economic status, the public are well informed about the performance of the political parties, Fachry said, adding that people could easily recall the activities of political parties from what they had seen on TV.
The survey showed that 78.6 percent of respondents obtained information on the parties from TV. Respondents who had access to dailies, magazines, tabloids, or radio were less than nine percent on average.
The poll was carried out between Aug. 10 and Aug. 30 in Jakarta, Serang, Bandung, Semarang, Yogyakarta and Surabaya, all cities in Java. In each city, 500 people were targeted at random for their responses.
The sampling error in the survey was plus or minus 1.91 percent, with confidence of 0.95 percent.
Fachry said Java was chosen because most of the country's population lives on the island.
He added that poor people were targeted as respondents because they made up the majority of the country's population.
He said five more surveys would be carried out with the same respondents ahead of the April 2004 election to determine what patterns might emerge regarding their political preferences.