Jakarta – A survey by the Voxpol Center found that the majority of Indonesians don’t care about or aren’t interested in the promises made by the presidential (capres) and vice presidential (cawapres) candidates in the 2019 presidential elections (pilpres).
The public’s disinterest in the promises being sold by the candidates however, will not have any significant impact on their level of electability.
“As many as 70.4 percent of the public isn’t interested in the political promises being offered by the capres and cawapres. Only 18.3 percent of voters are interested”, said Voxpol Center Director Pangi Syarwi Chaniago in a press release on Thursday March 21.
Meanwhile Voxpol also measured the public’s level of trust in the political promises made by the presidential and vice presidential candidates.
This was based on data gathered through the simulated question “how much trust do you place in the political promises being made by the capres/cawapres during the campaign period?”.
The results showed that 62.8 percent of voters did not trust the political promises being made by the candidates while 24.7 percent of respondents said they did trust them. Moreover, if was also found that only 16.6 percent of voters said they would demand a fulfillment of these promises if the candidates are elected.
“The remaining 71.4 percent will not demand a fulfillment or were not interested in the capres’ political promise after they’re elected”, explained Chaniago.
Looking at the survey results, Chaniago believes that it is very common for politicians to make flimsy promises as they please. The presidential and vice presidential candidates as well as politicians believe that political promises during an electoral contest will influence their electability.
“On the other hand, the public will not demand that the political promise that they were offered be fulfilled, because the psychology of voters is that they are forgetful and are forgiving”, he explained.
Chaniago believe that the promises made by incumbent President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and his rival Prabowo Subianto are quite natural.
According to Chaniago, the basic character of politicians is that they are fond of making promises. It’s natural, he said, because politicians like making flimsy promises, selling sweet promise. Even promising programs that make no sense. “Because promises are a political cosmetic”, he asserted.
The Voxpol survey was conducted between February 26 and March 8 involving 1,220 respondents of 17 years of age or over in all Indonesian provinces using a multistage random sampling method with a margin of error of 2.98 percent and a 95 percent level of reliability.
All selected respondents were interviewed face-to-face and reconfirmation of respondents was carried out on a 20 percent randomly selected sample. (ain/ain)
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was “Survei: Mayoritas Masyarakat Tak Peduli Obral Janji Pilpres”.]
