Jakarta – A survey by the polling group Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC) has found than the majority of the public does not believe in the revival of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).
These findings were conveyed by SMRC Executive Director Sirojudin Abbas during a virtual presentation of the results of a SMRC national survey titled Public Attitudes on the Revival of the PKI on Wednesday September 30.
Abbas explained according to their findings as many as 64 percent of respondents did not know about or had not heard about the issue of the revival of the PKI.
Some 36 percent of respondents meanwhile admitted to knowing about the issue but only 39 percent said they believed that there was a revival of the PKI. 61 percent of these respondents meanwhile said they did not believe in a PKI revival.
“Among those who know (about the view or the issue of a PKI revival) the majority do not believe that this revival is actually happening”, said Abbas on Wednesday afternoon.
Based on the percentage of respondents who believed in the PKI’s revival, as many as 79 percent considered the revival a threat, 13 percent did not think that the revival was a threat yet, and 6 percent believed that it already a threat.
Out of the 79 percent of respondents who consider the PKI’s revival a threat, 69 percent believe that the government has not acted firmly enough or not acted firmly at all against this threat.
“Meanwhile 30 percent feel that the government has been very or quite firm”, said Abbas.
Abbas said that the small number of people who still believe in a PKI revival cannot be separated from a growth in their level of knowledge.
“Their low level of belief [in the issue] is apparently related to the Indonesian public’s [level of] knowledge about the issue of the PKI revival in Indonesia”, he said.
The survey was conducted using telephone interviews with 1,203 randomly selected respondents. The interviews took place between September 23 and September 26. The survey had a margin of error of 2.9 percent and a confidence level of 95 percent.
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was “Survei SMRC: Dari 36 Persen yang Tahu Isu Kebangkitan PKI, 61 Persen Tidak Percaya”.]
