Persepsi Cancels Membership of Two Survey Institutes

Jakarta (Antara) - The Association of Public Opinion Survey Institutes (Persepi) has decided to revoke the membership of Puskaptis and Jaringan Survey Indonesia (JSI) for refusing an audit over their recent presidential election survey results. The decision had been taken by the Ethics Council, which is chaired by Dr Hari Wijayanto, following an ethics meeting on July 15-16. Hari Wijayanto said Persepi had conducted an audit on its seven members after two had produced different quick vote counts following the presidential election on July 9. The five institutes that had produced similar quick vote count results are CSIS-Cyrus Network, SMRC, Lembaga Survey Indonesia (LSI), Indikator Politik Indonesia, and Populi Center and Pol-Tracking. The two that had announced different results are Puskaptis and JSI. Hari said the five institutes had accepted Persepi's invitation and explained their process of sampling and data collection, vote counting, and quick vote count management. "Based on that an audit had been conducted," he said. No audit however has been done on Puskaptis and JSI because JSI had only submitted a letter, while Puskaptis had not given explanation, he said. Hari said an independent audit team has been established for auditing the institutes, and based on their conclusion the five institutes were declared as having met the requirements. Puskaptis and JSI had refused to explain their vote-counting process, showing that they are not transparent and therefore unprofessional. So, "their membership has been revoked," he said. A member of the Ethics Council, Hamdi Muluk, said the survey institutes will have produced similar results if they had conducted sampling and data collection as well as vote counting professionally. Even if differences occur, he said, it will only be slim due to different locations of sample collection. (*)