Margareth S. Aritonang, Jakarta – Executives of the ruling Democratic Party said that pollsters and the news media were to blame for its sinking popularity.
The party executives said that pollsters were to blame for conducting opinion polls that highlight its low approval rating and the media was at fault for running unbalanced reporting.
Senior party member Denny Kailimang said that negative coverage of the Democratic Party had been used by the party's enemies to seek political gains.
"Internally, the Democratic Party is just fine. However, there are people out there who are not happy that the party is stable and want to stir things up. It seems that many people are closely watching every single thing [we do] and they are envious," Denny said during a discussion at the House of Representatives on Thursday.
Denny was commenting on surveys released by pollsters that continued to chart the fall in the party's popularity.
In spite of Denny's claim that the party was united as ever, the reality on the ground showed that the party suffered internal divisions and members attacked one another in public.
On Tuesday, secretary of Democratic Party's Jakarta branch, Irfan Gani, criticized Hayono Isman, a member of the party's board of trustees, for urging party chairman Anas Urbaningrum to resign from the party's top post amid allegations of corruption.
"What he said disrespected Anas. Anas is our chairman, and we must respect him. I know that the party's sinking popularity has troubled everyone in the party, but that is no excuse to slander one another," Irfan said.
Hayono had earlier said that all party members, including Anas, must resign voluntarily rather than wait for the Corruption Eradication Commission to name them suspects in graft cases.
"I have repeatedly said that the Democratic Party should do something to save the party when its electability drops to 10 percent. The time is right for us to do something, because electability is now at 10.7 percent, according to the latest survey," Hayono said, referring to a recent survey released by the Soegeng Sarjadi Syndicate (SSS) that showed the Democratic Party could only garner 10.7 percent of the vote if a general election were to take place today.
An opinion poll by the Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI) predicted that the Democratic Party would likely suffer a serious defeat in 2014 and garner only 11 percent of the vote if the election were held today.
The LSI survey marked the lowest approval rating for the Democratic Party in the past 18 months. In January 2011, the LSI said that 20.5 percent of respondents backed the Democratic Party, slipping to 15.3 percent by June 2011 before bottoming out at 13.7 percent in January this year.
On Thursday evening, the Democratic Party faction at the House of Representatives held a meeting with scores of Jakarta-based pollsters and think tanks, including the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Indonesian Survey Institute, the Indonesian Survey Circle, the SSS and the Institute for Social and Economic Research, Education and Information (LP3ES).
"We wanted to know what indicators that they used in the survey so that we can improve our electability," said Democratic Party faction chairman Nurhayati Ali Assegaf.
An analyst from the SSS, Soekardi Rinakit, said that his organization championed objectivity when conducting opinion polls.
"We didn't mean to do anything other than understand how the public evaluates political parties' performance, including that of the Democratic Party. Besides, we are not the only group who found that the public has lost their trust in the party," Sukardi said.