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public opinion poll conducted by the Jakarta-based Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI) found that a majority of respondents would like to hear more about the 2014 presidential candidates'€™ programs before they cast their votes in the presidential election on July 9.

The LSI survey, released on Tuesday and conducted between 15 and 18 April in 33 provinces, found 65.7 percent of 1200 respondents said they wanted to hear presidential candidates talk about their future policies if elected, while only 17.25 percent wanted to know about the possible future coalition.

This was followed by 8.7 percent of respondents who wanted to know about the key ministers of the candidates, while the remaining 8.35 percent did not know what they wanted to hear from presidential candidates.

LSI researcher Ardian Sopa highlighted the fact that as much as 63.8 percent of all respondents said they had no knowledge of what the presidential candidates intended to do if elected.

Around 70.1 percent of lowerclass respondents did not know of candidates'€™ future programs, followed by 60.25 percent of middle- class respondents and 48.2 percent of upper-class respondents.

'€œThese findings are surprising because the respondents in the upper class have the most access to different types of media such as the Internet, television and newspapers, so we would think that more would know about candidates'€™ political programs,'€ Ardian said.

He added that 50.1 percent of college-educated respondents also said they were clueless on the
matter.

Although Ardian said he was unsurprised about the high percentage of respondents with lower education who had no knowledge of the issue, the LSI did not expect the results from Indonesia'€™s most educated to be so high.

'€œThis implies many voters are in danger of voting for a president based only on who is the most well-known, rather than someone of substance who has an actual plan for their presidential period.'€
he said.

Ardian added that political programs were considered as political contracts between politicians and their constituents so that they could hold them accountable when promises were not fulfilled.

This is not possible if the presidential candidates do not speak about their future policies during their campaigns, he argued.

To create more informed voters, Dewi Arum, another LSI researcher, said that presidential candidates and their political parties had to be more active in raising awareness of what the public can expect if they are elected.

'€œThe presidential candidates must also use different methods depending on which economic class they are currently targeting, and must maximize the use of their political machine,'€ she told The Jakarta Post.

She explained that to reach people from the middle- to upper-class, candidates should be more active on social media because of its speed and sizable reach.

Several parties have named their own presidential candidates but no political party won enough votes to pass the 25 percent presidential threshold needed to field their own presidential candidates.

Analysts said the upcoming election would be a three-horse race involving the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle'€™s (PDI-P) Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo, the Gerindra Party'€™s Prabowo Subianto and the Golkar Party'€™s Aburizal Bakrie. (fss)