Fifty percent of respondents are willing to get vaccinated, 34% aren’t and 16% are still having doubts, shows a public opinion poll of the Institute for Democracy “Societas Civilis” (IDSCS), conducted as part of the Swiss-funded Parliament Support Programme.
Questions on COVID-19 vaccination are part of a field survey of the citizens’ perceptions about the work of Parliament, conducted by IDSCS from February 17 through March 10 on a sample of 1010 respondents.
Most respondents (39%), prefer the vaccine produced by Pfizer and 21% prefer the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. China’s Sinopharm and Moderna are less preferred – by 6% and 5% respectively. The least preferred is AstraZeneca – only 3% of respondents would chose the vaccine produced by the British-Swedish company.
Also, 27% of respondents either don’t know or have no answer as to which jab they prefer to be vaccinated with.
Other general findings of the poll in relation to Parliament’s functioning, in addition to pandemic-related developments, show that respondents would like the Parliament’s website to be more interactive and to have the chance to communicate with MPs. They think that information reported by media outlets, mainly TV stations, is enough for them. They would like to have more public meetings with MPs.
According to the poll, the citizens’ perception is that the executive branch has more control over Parliament that the legislative body has on the government, which is regulated under the Constitution.
As many as 74% of respondents think that political crises should be solved in Parliament rather than in closed meetings of party leaders.
Regarding public trust in institutions, the poll shows that the President enjoys the highest support compared to the government, Parliament and the judiciary.
Parliament’s work has an average score of 2.6, the same as last year.
The Institute for democracy “Societas Civlis” (IDSCS) since 2019 is part of the 10-year Parliament Support Program (PSP), in partnership with the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and Centre for Change Management (CCM). PSP aims to support Parliament’s reform efforts towards strengthening its role of oversight over the executive branch, adopting higher quality laws and achieving greater openness, transparency and citizen participation in the work of Parliament.
