Compared to March when no issue was clearly perceived as the most important one, the public was less ambivalent as to the major events occurring in April. Two major events took place in April, being very close in importance: the validity of the Beneš decrees and the conflict between Israel and Palestine. A fifth of those polled consider both of these events to be the most important recent developments.

In an April survey, the Public Opinion Research Centre of focused, inter alia, on the involvement of people in the political and economic life of the society, and on membership in various organisations. We first asked the respondents whether they, apart from voting, have been involved in political life during the last ten years. 16% of them were engaged in politics on communal level, as opposed to only 2% participating in politics on higher - regional and nationwide - levels.

We asked all the respondents about which electoral method is, according to their point of view, the most suitable for the Czech Republic. The Czech public in general and also all the important subgroups of the population agree that the president of the republic should be elected by all voters. This electoral method was in total favoured by 57 % interviewees. The current electoral method (president elected by the Parliament) is considered the most suitable by one fifth of the respondents (20 %) and 12 % view as optimal the method of election by a wider group of electors.

The public is most often tolerant to youth, people with other religious beliefs and invalids. These answers were given by more than 80 % of citizens. Compared with 2000, tolerance toward the rich and people with a different political belief increased.

The Czech public has long perceived corruption (73%) and organised crime (70%) as two of the major social problems, requiring ‘very urgent’ action. Although general crime used to be widely regarded as the third worst problem, its position has been taken by unemployment (considered as ‘a very urgent problem’ by 67% of respondents, an increase by 19 percentage points since last October), which reflects its high current level in our country.

On the whole, the orientation to the right and the strong centre are still slightly predominant. In this respect, no significant changes have occurred during the last six years since when we have been monitoring the self-classification of respondents on a left-right scale. The left-wing orientation is traditionally reported among pensioners, blue-collar workers, respondents with low living standards and sympathisers of the KSCM and the CSSD – the latter also make a strong presence in the middle of the scale.

Current results show that nearly two thirds of respondents (63%) take a critical view of how parties behave, of which 41% generally dislike the behaviour of parties and 22% say that the situation makes them disgusted. On the other hand, 26% of those polled are critical of some parties only and 2% of respondents express general satisfaction with how political parties behave. Compared to this January, there was a slight drop in generally critical assessments and an increase in the percentage of those respondents who are critical of some parties only.

Regularly quarterly we ask respondents about selected political personalities. Today’s list contains 23 names of politicians selected according to a long-term monitoring process and the current socio-political situation. The list features all members of the government, president and chairmen of Senate and Chamber of Deputies. At the top of the list we can find Stanislav Gross (trusted by 68% of the respondents).

In late April, a half of the electorate was determined which party to vote for, whereas roughly a quarter admitted they might change their mind. 17% said they were unlikely to vote and almost a tenth does not know. Compared to the last survey, conducted in late March and early April, the percentage of the decided voters increased by 6 points, while the number of the undecided decreased.

In the opinion of about 40% of respondents, the KSCM continues to be the most unacceptable party for our citizens. A fifth up to a fourth would never vote the ODS. The SPR-RSC is considered unacceptable by roughly a tenth of respondents.