Irfan Kamil, Jakarta – The results of an Indonesian Political Indicator survey showed that the majority of Indonesians disagree with increasing fuel (BBM) prices. This was found in a survey held on May 25-31 before the government decided to cut fuel subsidies.
"We found that 78.7 percent reject a fuel price hike, it was just a plan then, yes, now it's been manifested, we need to do another survey", said Indonesian Political Indicator Executive Director Burhanudin Muhtadi during the release of the survey results on Wednesday September 7.
The 78.7 percent figure comprised 33.6 percent of respondents who do not really agree and 45.1 percent who absolutely disagree.
According to the survey, there were only 2.4 percent who strongly agreed with a price hike and 15.6 percent who agreed. Meanwhile there were 3.4 percent who did not know or did not answer.
"At the very least, based on the attitude of respondents when the government was only planning [to increase fuel prices] the opposition to this was almost 80 percent", said Muhtadi.
The survey was conducted using a random digit dialing (RDD) method, a technique in which a sample is selected through a process of generating random phone numbers with a sample size of 1,219 respondents.
The survey's margin of error was estimated at around 2.9 percent with a level of confidence of 95 percent, assuming a simple random sampling.
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "Survei Indikator: Mayoritas Warga Tak Setuju Kenaikan Harga BBM".]
