Media and Church trusted more than Government says Dominican survey

posted on: Jan 14 2011 15:50 by The Reporter. Viewed 406 times.


The media and the Catholic Church are the institutions most valued by Dominican society, according to the latest results of a survey “The Barometer of the Americas”, which took place in 26 countries in the Americas, during 2010.
The ‘media’ took the number one spot, with 72.8% of Dominicans expressing confidence in them, and the Catholic Church came second with 69.7%. Following these were neighborhood councils with 64.5%, evangelical churches with 63.1% and President Leonel Fernández, with 61.8%.
Interestingly, the survey showed that public confidence in President Fernandez was much higher than in any other governmental institutions. The two institutions with the lowest percentage of trust according to the survey were the political parties and the National Police. The Police were beaten by 20 percentage points by the Armed Forces.
The report on the survey emphasized that although 54.5% of the Dominican population surveyed in 2010 did support a political party, their trust in the party averaged around 33.1%.
 This particular survey was organized by the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) which aims to measure democratic values and political behavior in the Americas with national probability samples.
According to the points in the report, the Dominican Republic is among the Latin American countries that have been able to weather the global economic crisis without too much negative impact, but it accepts that in 2010 a large number of Dominicans lost their jobs and thus lost income.
“In the Dominican case, as regards the economic side, we found that in the regional context the Dominican Republic has one the highest levels of job losses and income, as reported by respondents in terms of the conditions at home, indicating that the economic crisis has had a real impact on household economy,” explained political scientist, Rosario Espinal, offering further details from the survey.
He also indicated that among the respondents, there is a widespread perception that there is an economic crisis, because in addition to losing revenue, many had also lost their jobs.
Most people said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the way democracy works in the Dominican Republic, while on a regional comparison; the country was placed around the middle on a scale of satisfaction with the functioning of democracy.

JUSTICE
According to “The Barometer of the Americas” survey, the Dominican justice system remains a long way from achieving a high level of confidence, since the data shows a slight decline from previous surveys, while the level of confidence in justice in general, is placed in an intermediate position in a regional comparison. In terms of the Dominican Republic, the average confidence dropped from 52 points in 2008 to 48.7 in 2010.

LOYALTY
Despite the low confidence in political parties, Dominican society continues to express a significant level of loyalty, as 54.5% of the population surveyed in 2010 said they supported a particular party (the third highest among the countries in the region), although the report also stresses that this confidence also fell in 2010 over 2006 and 2008.

SURVEY
The survey was conducted in 26 countries, including the USA, Canada and Jamaica, with more than 40,000 people surveyed. The Dominican survey was conducted by Gallup Dominicana under the supervision and guidance of the survey coordinators, and sampled 1,500 people.