The Spike In PSI's Voice Was Welcomed By Netizens' Negative Sentiment To The Wrong Party's Joke

Chairman of the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI) Kaesang Pangarep in a grand campaign at Temanggal Square, Puwomartani Village, Sleman Regency, Yogyakarta. (Between/ Anita Permata Dewi)

JAKARTA The surge in the results of the recapitulation of the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI) has attracted public attention. The public wondered why PSI's voice increased significantly in a day. Allegations of manipulation and fraud were spread by the media and became the talk of netizens.

The General Elections Commission (KPU) reported that as of March 5, 2023, PSI had obtained 3.13 percent or 2.4 million votes. Based on this acquisition, PSI was ranked 10th or right below the United Development Party (PPP) which received 4.01 percent.

Because the vote count is still in the range of 65.89 percent, it is not impossible that PSI can penetrate the parliamentary threshold or the parliamentary threshold set at four percent.

As a result, the issue has become a concern and has received a lot of public criticism of the implementation of the election. Netray Media Monitoring also monitors this warm issue on news channels and X.

Monitoring of Netray with PSI keywords from February 29 to March 5, 2024, found 1,125 articles published by 144 Indonesian online media. Based on the total uploads, Tempo is the media portal that uploads the most articles related to this keyword.

"In the monitoring period, Tempo has published 82 articles and followed by the Voice media with 72 articles uploaded," Netray reports.

As PSI votes continue to soar which are considered unreasonable, media reports about the party whose chairman is the eldest son of President Joko Widodo, Kaesang Pangarep, peaked on March 4, 2024. There are 342 articles that appear with keywords. However, negative sentiment articles are more dominant than positive or neutral articles.

The increase in PSI votes from 2.85 percent to 3.13 percent contributed positive sentiment to the party. Since then, negative news has increasingly dominated monitoring. The issue of alleged fraud continues to appear in various media reports.

Telematics expert Roy Suryo believes PSI's vote increase is abnormal and he urged the Criminal Investigation Unit of the National Police to audit the KPU's Sirekap.

PSI's significant increase in votes was not only widely reported in the mass media, but also stole the attention of netizens X. Through the same keywords and monitoring period, Netray found 220.3 thousand uploads. This topic was also discussed by more than 33 thousand accounts with potential contacts reaching 166 million accounts.

In one day on March 3, 2024, more than 66,000 uploads with a negative dominance of 41.9 thousand or 63.2 percent were found. But not only on that date, during the monitoring period PSI topics on channel X, uploads were dominated by negative sentiment.

The increase in PSI's voice in a short time received a lot of negative attention and even criticism from netizens. This can be seen from the Top Complaints with a collection of negative phrases dominating the ranks. Meanwhile, if you look at the ranks of Top WordsNetray, the conversations that also dominate the discussion of negative sentiment come from the vocabulary of inflating, cheating, anomaly, and mistake.

The results of the votes obtained by PSI became citizens who were skeptical by Sirekap's accuracy. In addition, this anomaly of voice also led to allegations of Jokowi's interference with his youngest son's party.

The discussion about PSI was also colored by sarcastic comments after the term Salah Input Party and unfortunately children appeared. These two terms were raised by netizens as a form of criticism for the anomaly.

Political Social Analyst Karyono Wibowo said that the KPU and survey institutions are required to provide a detailed explanation to the public if PSI's votes will exceed four percent.

"The KPU must explain in detail related to the surge in PSI votes that are suspicious of the people, so far the KPU's explanation is not detailed," Karyono said when contacted by VOI.

Furthermore, he also asked the KPU not to underestimate PSI's vote problem, which experienced a significant increase. Moreover, this issue has been in the spotlight from ordinary people to political elites.

"KPU, don't take this as a trivial matter, you have to explain this in detail, as well as possible, as clearly as possible why this happened. If there is an intention to inflate PSI's voice then it is dangerous, it can be chaotic. It can further confirm, confirm allegations of child love operations," he concluded.