IPR: The Decline in Satisfaction with Prabowo is Reasonable in the Middle of the 'Clean-Clean' Agenda 

President Prabowo Subianto (ANTARA/HO-BPMI Presidential Secretariat)

JAKARTA - Indonesia Political Review (IPR) considers the decline in public satisfaction with President Prabowo Subianto to 51.1 percent is a natural thing in the midst of governance reform and corruption eradication being carried out by the government. This condition has created political resistance as well as fluctuations in public perceptions.

"This decline in satisfaction is a reasonable consequence of the improvement process. President Prabowo is pushing for a clean agenda in various ministries and institutions, including law enforcement institutions," IPR Executive Director Iwan Setiawan told reporters, Thursday, July 30.

"In the short term, this condition actually makes the public see more and more corruption cases being revealed, which affects the perception of government performance," he continued.

Iwan said the increasing coverage of corruption cases did not necessarily indicate that corruption practices were getting worse in the current government. But, on the other hand, this condition can be interpreted as an indication that the supervision and law enforcement system is running more actively.

"Cases that have emerged at the National Nutrition Agency (BGN), the arrest of three former BGN leaders, to the case that dragged former Deputy Attorney General for Special Crimes (Jampidsus) Febrie Ardiansyah into the public eye. However, from the perspective of governance, what is more important is the courage of the state to carry out reforms, strengthen the oversight system, and enforce accountability regardless of institutions," he said.

Iwan also assessed the prevalence of the disclosure of corruption cases, including those involving a number of regional heads, showed that efforts to improve governance were underway.

Therefore, he assessed that the next challenge is to ensure that the legal process is professional, transparent, and consistent so that it can increase public confidence again.

In addition to law enforcement, Iwan said the public perception of the government was also influenced by political communication, including a number of statements by President Prabowo that sparked debate in the public sphere.

"Statements such as 'Londo Ireng' have become a very popular issue to be discussed and reproduced in the media and social media. As a result, the public discussion space is more occupied by the controversy of the term than the substance of the message that the President wants to convey. In the era of digital communication, framing often forms perceptions faster than explanations of the actual context," he explained.

However, IPR assessed that the public's satisfaction with the President was still above 50 percent so that the government was considered to still have room to strengthen public communication as well as show tangible results from the reform agenda being carried out.

"In the future, President Prabowo's success will be determined by his ability to turn this clean agenda into improvements that can be felt directly by the community, in the form of better public services, a cleaner bureaucracy, and increasingly fair law enforcement. If these results start to be seen in a tangible way, we believe that public confidence has the potential to increase again," concluded Iwan.