Presidential poll in Semarang

SEMARANG, Central Java: A poll of 625 students at the state Diponegoro University here found that 82.1 percent of respondents believe a change in the national leadership should take place during the plenary session of the People's Consultative Assembly in March.

The poll, conducted by the student senate, also collected names of likely candidates to succeed President Soeharto. Among those put forward were: ousted leader of the Indonesian Democratic Party Megawati Soekarnoputri, chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulema Abdurrahman Wahid, Muhammadiyah chairman Amien Rais, Minister of Finance Mar'ie Muhammad, State Minister of National Development Planning Ginandjar Kartasasmita and Minister of Information R. Hartono.

The poll follows a recent vote conducted by students at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta. They also said that the time for change had come.

The chairman of the student senate, Tafrikan Marzuki, admitted that the results of the poll may not truly represent the voice of Diponegoro University's 15,000 students.

"It's alright if someone brushes aside the results of the poll as biased, because we did use a proportional accidental nonrandom sampling technique," he said here yesterday.

The University's rector, Muladi, disregarded the poll as a a completely unnecessary stunt given the country's economic doldrums.

He added that the methodology used in the poll was also questionable. (har)