SBY'S POPULARITY DECISIVE FACTOR IN HIS VICTORY : ANALYST

Jakarta, July 9 (ANTARA) - The popularity of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) was a decisive factor in his victory in Wednesday's presidential election, a political analyst said.

Executive director of the Research Center of the University of Indonesia (UI)'s Faculty of Socio-Political Sciences, Sri Budi Eko Wardani, said the strong image and popularity of SBY influenced the people to vote for him during the election.

He said the strong popularity and image Yudhoyono had built up since the April 2009 legislative elections, and as the incumbent president, were had greatly influenced people to choose the SBY-Boediono pair.

The Democratic Party's victory in the legislative elections in April was also attributable to the SBY popularity factor, he said when asked to comment on the results of the quick counts by a number of survey institutes on Wednesday's presidential election.

The quick counts showed that the SBY-Boediono led the race with about 60 percent of the vote while their two rivals, Mega-Pro and JK-WIN, trailed behind.

Wardani said actually voters in the presidential election did not see anything exceptional in the three presidential and vice presidential candidates.

This condition gave an advantage to SBY as the incumbent who was also viewed to have made relatively great achievements in carrying out national development.

He said people considered the success of national development ao far to be due to SBY's efforts.

"SBY was seen as a noted figure who played the main role so that people voted for him," he added.

On the role of the political machines of the political parties, he said he did not see any significant role of the political machine in the contribution of votes for SBY.

A nubmer of political parties in coalition with the SBY-Boediono pair are not united in giving their support to the coalition. "Yet, the SBY campaign team has played a good role," he said.***1***