The PKPI's deputy secretary-general, Rully Soekarta, said on Thursday that despite its optimism, the party would keep a lookout for any attempted fraud to reduce his party's number of votes.

'€œBased on intelligence data, in the 2009 general election we won 2.67 percent. If the election had been fair, we would have passed [the threshold]. But I don'€™t know who reduced our votes,'€ he said as quoted by kompas.com.

The 2009 general election set a 2.5 percent electoral threshold to secure a seat in the House of Representatives. However, the PKPI failed to meet the threshold, winning only 0.9 percent of the vote.

Rully added that his party was optimistic about its chances after witnessing the positive response by the public during its recent campaigning.

'€In our campaigns, the number of our members and participants has outweighed those involved in the Golkar Party and Democratic Party'€™s campaigns. In Manado, North Sulawesi, the PKPI campaign event was attended by around 30,000 people. In Makassar, South Sulawesi, we hope to attract 10,000 people,'€ he said.

Rully also said that he did not believe the recent survey results that predicted the PKPI would gain less than 1 percent of votes. He said the situation on the ground was often very different to survey results.

'€Nothing is certain in this world. A party is not great if it only wins in a survey,'€ he said. (idb)

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