Political

In a June survey of the Public Opinion Research Centre, the respondents who did not participate in the election to the European Parliament were asked to clarify their reasons.

Roughly a fifth of the polled citizens (21%) said that they had not participated in the election because they were dissatisfied with politics, a slightly smaller percentage said they did not know the candidates and that they felt their vote ‘could not decide anything’ (18 and 17% respectively), 13% of respondents said they had been outside their place of residence and roughly a tenth of those surveyed did not take interest in the European Union (or the European Parliament), politics in general or said they disagreed with the accession to the EU.

A June survey by the Public Opinion Research Centre included, inter alia, an aggregate of questions investigating what the Czech public thinks about political parties and the European integration process. Almost a third of Czech citizens over 18 years of age sympathise with no political party. Less than a quarter of respondents sympathise with the ODS, while 13% of those polled sympathise with the KSCM and 9% with the CSSD.

As regards the political parties represented in the Chamber of Deputies, citizens classify them from the left to the right as follows: Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM), Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD), Christian and Democratic Union–Czechoslovak People’s Party (KDU-CSL), Freedom Union-Democratic Union (US-DEU), Civil Democratic Party (ODS), with the last three parties lying in the right half of the used scale.

In a June 2004 survey of the Public Opinion Research Centre, the respondents were asked to say how often over the last four weeks before the election to the European Parliament they had paid attention to the activities described in table 1. Roughly a half of the polled citizens said that they had ‘sometimes’ watched the information about the European election on TV, read about it in newspapers and discussed it with friends or family.

Within a framework of a methodological experiment, a June survey of the Public Opinion Research Centre included a few questions concerning the issue of political systems. The print information analyses the evaluation of political systems that existed in the Czech Republic in the recent past, as well as some generally named variants. We also monitored the significance of some attributes of political systems, such as freedom or equality.

Monitoring public stances on certain general and political issues is commonly included in researches of public opinion. The array of questions included in the June survey of the Public Opinion Research Centre focused primarily on general economic issues, selected aspects of social security and personal responsibility, and on the issue of freedom. The results reveal that, inter alia, the Czech public strongly prefers the maximisation of freedoms and the concept of a state that protects the freedoms and rights of its citizens in the event of their violation to a state that pre-emptively limits their rights and freedoms.

In a June survey of the Public Opinion Research Centre, the citizens polled expressed their views on the issue of women in politics. Almost 44% of them believe that politics would change for the better if more women were involved. 5% of respondents took an anti-feminising attitude towards politics, thinking that politics would change for the worse in the event of more women being involved. 40% of those surveyed are of the opinion that politics would not change if more women participated in it.

In June, the Public Opinion Research Centre conducted a survey dealing with, inter alia, the issue of women in politics. The vast majority of Czech citizens (84%) hold the opinion that the involvement of women in public affairs is beneficial to society. On the other hand, only a tenth of respondents think that it is not beneficial. Less than a quarter of respondents believe that the participation of women in public life is sufficient.

In the June survey, among other things Public Opinion Research Centre devoted a few questions to the issue of the so-called Beneš Decrees. In connection with discussions about the Beneš Decrees there have been opinions particularly coming from abroad that those Decrees that form the legal framework for the expulsion, should be cancelled. The first question therefore was to establish opinions of the Czech public as to the further validity of these Decrees.

Traditionally, relations of the Czech Republic with Slovakia (94 %) and Poland (92 % of respondents) are rated as the best. A smaller number of respondents (86 %) described the relations of the CZ and Hungary as being very or quite good. The share of the negative assessment of the Czech-Hungarian relations is however on a similar level as in the case of the above mentioned Slovakia and Poland, which shows there is a relatively large group of respondents (10 %), who could not evaluate relations with Hungary.