JAKARTA, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Indonesian President Joko Widodo obtained more approvals from results of latest surveys carried out by domestic independent poll agencies for the achievements that his government has made, analysts said.
Widodo secured the highest approval of 35.7 percent from respondents in the latest presidential election survey carried out by Median polling agency.
The incumbent president's approval rate was far above his arch rival Prabowo Subianto, the former army general, who secured 22.6 percent in the survey results.
There has been no single candidate publicly announce his candidacy to challenge Widodo in the election so far.
Subianto was Widodo's arch rival in 2014 presidential election. Widodo secured Indonesia's presidency post after obtaining over 53 percent of votes in a single vote casting process.
Subianto likely planned to take on Widodo once again as his political party, Gerindra, continues to gather coalition with other political parties.
"There was no single figure who is strong enough to compete with the incumbent president," Median Research Director Sudarto said here on Monday to expose results of a survey conducted by his agency from July 6 to 15 with a trust rate of 95 percent over 1,200 respondents across the nation.
In a previously-published results of a survey carried out by Indonesian Institute of Science (LIPI), Widodo obtained 58.2 percent of approvals, while Subianto obtained 26.6 percent of approvals.
A LIPI senior researcher Syamsuddin Harris said that the high approvals received by the incumbent president was closely related to public's satisfaction rate over the president's government achievements during the first presidency term that began in 2014.
Harris said that the government managed to significantly trim down inflation to 3.72 percent as of September last year, boosting up foreign investments up to the unprecedented amount of 929 million U.S. dollars last year and bringing 3.4 million of jobs.
Indonesia is scheduled to have a presidential and legislative election on April 17 next year with campaign process would start in October this year.
