Prague, March 2 (CTK) – The inhabitants of the Czech Republic have the highest trust in the police and military in the past 15 years, according to a STEM poll conducted in January and released to CTK yesterday.
The poll shows that 74 percent of people trust the military and 61 percent trust the police.
Since the establishment of the Czech Republic in 1993, Czechs only expressed a higher trust in the military and police in September 2002 after the disastrous floods when police officers and soldiers helped remove their consequences.
Public trust in the military and police was mostly under 50 percent from the beginning of the 1990s until the floods in 2002. From 2015 it was slightly decreasing or stagnating, while in the past year, it increased, on the contrary.
In January 2016, 69 percent of people trusted the military and 58 percent expressed trust in the police.
“The opinions of the military and police are interconnected. More than a half of citizens (55 percent) trust both the military and police corps. On the contrary, one-fifth (20 percent) trust neither of these institutions,” the pollsters said.
A quarter of respondents distinguish between the security forces. Nineteen percent trust only the military and 6 percent only the police.
People who assess Defence Minister Martin Stropnicky (ANO) positively, express a higher trust in the military, and those who share a positive view of Interior Minister Milan Chovanec (Social Democrats, CSSD) trust the military more than other respondents.
The poll also shows that university and secondary-school graduates trust the military and mainly the police more often than those with lower education.
“It is interesting that the differences depending on education level have considerably decreased in the assessment of the military since 2015. This means that trust in the military has increased mainly among people with lower education,” the STEM agency said.
The STEM poll was conducted on a sample of 1048 respondents over 18 on January 11-23.
