LSI Survey: Majority Reject President's Term Extension

President Jokowi attends a virtual commemoration of the 49th Anniversary of the PDI-P from the State Palace, Monday, January 10 (Photo: BPMI Setpres/Rusman)

JAKARTA - The Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) released a survey related to public attitudes towards the postponement of the 2024 General Election (Pemilu) and the presidential term.

As a result, the majority of respondents expressed their rejection of extending the presidential term on the grounds that there was a COVID-19 pandemic and economic recovery. This was conveyed by the Executive Director of LSI, Djayadi Hanan.

"Overall, 70.7 percent reject the extension of the presidential term. Among those who know about this issue, the rejection is even higher, namely 74 percent," said Djayadi when releasing the results of an online survey broadcast on YouTube LSI, Thursday, March 3.

"Meanwhile, among those who do not know about this issue, the rejection rate is lower, but the majority is still 67.5 percent," he added.

From this result, Djayadi said that there are two things that must be caught by the political elite in the country. First, the majority of the people reject the extension of the president's term of office.

"The second is that if this issue is spread more and more, the more the public knows it, the higher the rejection rate will be. The more the public knows, the more people will reject it. The basic attitude of the community is to refuse," he explained.

Furthermore, this survey also captures respondents who are satisfied with the work of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi), refusing to extend the term of office of the former governor of DKI Jakarta. The level of satisfaction with the performance of the president this time is at 66.3 percent.

"People who are satisfied with the performance agree to the presidential extension? No. The majority of 60 percent said they prefer to continue holding the 2024 election, so being satisfied or dissatisfied with performance does not correlate with the acceptance rate of the extension of the presidential term," said Djayadi.

LSI conducted this survey at the national level using the simple random sampling method with 1,197 respondents. The survey was conducted from February 25 to March 1. Meanwhile the margin of error is 2.89 percent and the confidence level is 95 percent.