IMAGE, POPULARITY DECISIVE FACTORS FOR SBY'S VICTORY

By Andi Abdussalam

Jakarta, July 9 (ANTARA) - Most of Indonesian voters made their choice in Wednesday's presidential elections based on the candidates' popularity so that Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), who has been building his public image, was able, based on quick counts, to win the July 8, 2009 presidential elections.

        "The popularity of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) was a decisive factor for his victory in Wednesday's presidential election," Executive Director of the Research Center of the University of Indonesia (UI)'s Faculty for Socio-Political Sciences, Sri Budi Eko Wardani, said.

        The popularity and strong image he has built since the April 2009 legislative election, and as the incumbent president, are the main decisive factors of the voters' preference to choose the SBY-Boediono pair.

        "Yudhoyono's Democratic Party victory in the legislative election in April was also much attributed to his popularity," Wardani said commenting on the results of quick counts by a number of survey institutes on Wednesday's presidential elections.

        The quick counts showed that the SBY who pairs with Boediono led the race with about 60 percent ahead while two other rivals, Megawati Soekarnoputri - Prabowo Subianto (Mega-Pro) and Jusuf Kalla - Wiranto (JK-WIN), were trailing behind.

        Wardani said that actually voters in the current presidential elections did not see anything exceptional with the three presidential and vice presidential candidates. This condition gave an advantage to SBY as the incumbent where people would then look at what he had done so far.

        At the same time voters also viewed that the incumbent actually has made relatively good achievements in carrying out national development. The people considered that the success of the present national development was part of the achievement of the incumbent, namely Yudhoyono. "SBY was seen as a noted figure who played the role so that the people voted for him," Wardani said.

        According to Sri Budi Eko Wardani, popularity and image have done more than what political parties' political machines could do in earning support for their presidential candidates. Wardani said he did not see any significant roles played by political machines that contributed to the victory of SBY.

        The political machines of a number of political parties in coalition with the SBY-Boediono pair did not function. "Yet, SBY campaign teams have played a good role," Wardani said.

        The same thing was also aired by Arie Sudjito of Gajah Mada University's socio-political faculty. He said the political machines of political parties did not effectively play a role in the victory of the SBY-Boediono duo.

        "In the SBY victory the people's preference was more on the figure or popularity of the candidate, not because the political machines of political parties. The political machines were no longer effective to influence the voters," Arie Sudjito,

        He said that the victory also indicated that money politics also had no significant impact on changing the people's preference to vote for.

        "This should serve as a lesson. So far, there is an opinion that money politics could affect the people's preference but now it turns out that money politics did not affect them," he said.

        He said that field observations in a number of regions indicated that money politics was no longer ripe in the 2009 presidential polls. It is not as ripe as that in the 2009 legislative elections.

        "This means that voters already have their own mind-set with regard to their preference in the presidential elections so that they were no longer affected with money politics," he said.

        In the meantime, the victory of the SBY-Boediono ticket in the presidential race also showed that primordial politics in Indonesia is also fading away. The Indonesia Survey Institute (LSI) said in its exit poll release that primordial politics in Indonesia had died out as it was proved with the results of Wednesday's presidential elections.

        "Majority of voters outside Java voted for presidential and vice presidential candidates Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) and Bodiono although they are Javanese," Burhanuddin Muhtadi, founder and senior researcher of (LSI), said.

        He said that most of the members of the largest Muslim organizations, (NU) and Muhammadiyah, also voted for the SBY_Boediono presidential ticket. The support of the largest Muslim organizations for a certain presidential candidate was not followed by their mass supporters.

        Muhtadi explained that the LSI had conducted exit polls to learn the characteristics of supporters of the three presidential candidate pairs. Their characteristics were surveyed based on their preference to religion, ethnicity, gender, mass organizations and political parties.

        On the gender issue, it turned out that most women voted for SBY. First time-voters also tended to vote for SBY. In the meantime, most voters for the Mega-Pro duo were men. With regard to ethnicity, the SBY-Boediono gained most votes almost evenly in all provinces outside Java, while the JK-WIN gained minimum support from Javanese voters, he said.

        Some 176,367,056 eligible voters in 33 provinces, including 1,133,738 Indonesians in 17 Indonesian embassies overseas were expected to have cast their votes on Wednesday in the country's second direct presidential elections.***1*** (T.A014/A/H- NG/A/O001) (T.A014/A/A014/A/O001) 09-07-2009 17:55:25