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Fuel price hike takes toll on Jokowi’s popularity
The latest public opinion poll found that President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s approval rating has taken a 10 percentage-point hit, as a result of his administration’s decision to raise fuel prices.
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Motorists line up for fuel at a gas station of state-owned company Pertamina in Gondangdia, Central Jakarta on Sept. 5. The government increased subsidized fuel prices on Sept. 3. (Antara/Dewa Ketut Sudiarta Wiguna)
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he latest public opinion poll found that President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s approval rating has taken a 10 percentage-point hit, as a result of his administration’s decision to raise subsidized fuel prices. While the drop is not yet an immediate cause for alarm, experts have said more needed to be done by Jokowi to keep his approval rating from plummeting even further.
An Indikator Politik Indonesia survey, which polled some 1,200 respondents across the country between Sept. 5 and 10, two days after the fuel price hike announcement, found that Jokowi’s approval rating now stands at 62.6 percent.
The figure is a 9.7 percentage-point drop for Jokowi’s popular rating, which previously stood at 72.3 percent, according to a previous Indikator survey done in August.
“Jokowi is shrewd enough to carry out this unpopular policy when his approval rating is high,” Indikator Politik executive director Burhanuddin Muhtadi said on Sunday.
“We would have an entirely different issue on our hands had Jokowi decided to raise fuel prices in May [when his approval rating was at 58 percent],” Burhanuddin went on to say, adding that an approval rating below 50 percent is commonly considered to be a crisis for most presidents.
While a majority of respondents still disagreed with the fuel price hike, the survey found that there has been a 6 percentage-point increase in the number of respondents who supported the decision, from 18 percent in the August survey to 24.1 percent.
One of the factors for the shift in public opinion, Burhanuddin said, was due to an increase in public awareness that fuel prices globally were still more expensive than in Indonesia even after the government increased the prices of subsidized fuels.
