Armando Siahaan – Despite its having endured months of attacks during the PT Bank Century bailout investigation, an independent survey released on Sunday showed the long-running saga had failed to damage the popularity of the Democratic Party.

The Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) also found that while parties that had opposed the Bank Century bailout received a small boost in popularity during the investigation, this was only short-lived.

The survey found the Democrats had 27 percent support at the end of April, 8 percent higher than the share of the vote the party managed to capture in the 2009 elections.

The LSI survey, which has a margin of error of 2-3 percentage points, was designed to measure the impact of the Bank Century investigation saga on the popularity of the major political parties. Four polls were taken – at the end of January, February, March and April – with between 1,200 and 2,200 people questioned in each poll.

Burhanuddin Muhtadi, a political analyst for LSI, argued that the Bank Century case had failed to affect Democrats' dominance because the House of Representatives' special committee (Pansus) investigating the bailout "had failed to link the bailout policy with SBY."

The Democrats' political support can only be seriously eroded if President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the main factor behind the party's popularity, was attacked, Burhanuddin said. However, the investigation by the House special committee focused its attention on Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati and Vice President Boediono, he said.

Burhanuddin said another reason for the Democrats' strong popularity was that the party was still enjoying a honeymoon period after Yudhoyono's win in the 2009 presidential elections. Finally, other parties had failed to produce a strong figure capable of competing with Yudhoyono, he said.

One of the key findings of the survey was that the Bank Century investigation saga had failed to increase the popularity of the political parties that vociferously attacked the bailout. This was true for opposition parties as well as for the parties within the coalition that voted to declare the bailout illegal – so-called pseudo-coalition parties.

The survey also sought to measure whether the popularity of the parties was affected by how they voted in the House's recommendation in March on whether the bailout was illegal or not. At the time, six out of nine House factions voted that the bailout was illegal.

At the end of March, the Democrats enjoyed 29 percent support, 2 percentage points more than in April. According to the survey, Golkar and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which both voted that the bailout was illegal, got a small boost in popularity in March, which then declined in April. Golkar enjoyed 14 percent support in March, the same as in the 2009 election, but this dropped to 11 percent in April.

Meanwhile, the PDI-P enjoyed 14 percent support in March, compared with its 13 percent of the vote in the 2009 elections, but this had dropped to 9 percent by April. The same trend was evident in support for the opposition Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) and People's Conscience Party (Hanura) and the pseudo-coalition Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and United Development Party (PPP).

The LSI said it believed the survey was evidence that although the opposition and pseudo-coalition parties had received a boost in popularity when the House issued its recommendations in March, this was only short-lived and had subsided by the following month.

"Electorally, the support trend toward [opposition and pseudo-coalition parties] had never gone beyond their results in the 2009 general elections. It even declined," LSI executive director Dodi Ambardi said.