Poll: More and more Czechs dissatisfied with democracy

Prague, March 12 (CTK) - The number of people dissatisfied with the operation of democracy in the Czech Republic has increased from about a half a year ago to three fifths now, according to the results of a CVVM poll carried out in February and released to CTK yesterday.

CVVM writes that the big increase in dissatisfaction is probably due to a low trust in the government and the Chamber of Deputies and a decline in trust in the president after the New Year's amnesty that Vaclav Klaus granted before his mandate expired last week.

According to the February poll, 33 percent of the asked are satisfied with the operation of democracy and 63 percent said they are dissatisfied. The latter figure was 10 percent lower one year ago.

The number of those who say people are not treated as equals and justly in the Czech Republic rose from 54 to 63 percent.

Like last year, this year's poll found that Czechs are generally less satisfied with the current political system (10 percent) than with the communist system before 1989 (24 percent).

On the other hand, the number of those who consider democracy the best of all methods of governance rose by 3 percent to 45 percent over the year.

The assessment of the current political system has remained almost unchanged in the year comparison. Thirty-seven percent of people again said it is good while 61 percent said it is bad.