SURVEY: SOEHARTO MOST FAVOURED PRESIDENT

By Ahmad Fuad Yahya

JAKARTA, May 16 (Bernama) -- Indonesians have voted the late Soeharto,
Indonesia’s second president, who ruled the country for 32 years, as their most
popular president. Soeharto defeated incumbent President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono, according to a survey released by Indo Barometer on Sunday.

Half of the respondents to the survey, which was conducted to mark 13 years
of the reforms era, believed that their lives had not improved, while more than
a third chose Soeharto as their favorite president.

About 36.5 per cent of respondents chose Soeharto as their favourite
president, followed by Yudhoyono (20.9 percent), Soekarno (9.8 percent),
Megawati Soekarnoputri (9.2 percent), B.J. Habibie (4.4 percent) and Abdurrahman
“Gus Dur” Wahid (4.3 percent).

The survey also showed that 40.9 percent of respondents from both rural and
urban areas said that the New Order regime under Soeharto was better than the
reforms era. Only 22.8 percent said that the reforms era was better than the
earlier periods, while 3.3 percent preferred the Old Order under Soekarno.

“Like it or not, that’s what the survey says,” Indo Barometer director M.
Qadari told The Jakarta Post.


Leaders from the Democrat Party, Yudhoyono's ruling party, were quick to
defend Yudhoyono, saying that in comparison to Soeharto's 32 years in power,
Yudhoyono's second-place finish after ruling the country for just over six years
could be construed as a significant achievement.

The survey, titled “Evaluation of 13 Years of Reform and 18 Months of the
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono-Boediono Administration” was carried out between April
25 and May 4 and involved 1,200 respondents from all the 33 Indonesian
provinces.

After Soeharto lost power in May 1998, the Indonesian presidency experienced
deep changes that were ushered in by Reformasi and marked the beginning of the
reforms era.

Yudhoyono is now in his second and final term in office as Indonesia's
president. Yudhoyono became Indonesia's first directly elected President in
2004. The amended constitution limits an individual to serving two terms of five
years as president of the republic.

The survey also found that more than half the respondents were seemingly
ignorant of politics: 47.8 percent said they did not know when the reforms era
began and 17.5 percent answered incorrectly.



“Most of them identified reform as ‘any change,’ instead of democracy,
corruption eradication or the economic crisis,” Qadari noted.

Only 29.7 percent of respondents said that they were satisfied with the
current administration, while 55.5 percent said they were unsatisfied. The rest
of the respondents declined to answer.

The survey also revealed that only 31 percent of respondents thought the
current situation was better than what it was 13 years ago, while 27.2 percent
believed that both eras were the same. About 28.2 percent believed that the
situation had become worse.

Qadari said the respect for former president Soeharto and the New Order
regime implied dissatisfaction with the reforms era.

He added that respondents made a strong connection between reforms and the
government’s performance, with several respondents saying that they judged
reforms by the success of the government, instead of considering how democracy
had been upheld.