SWS: 3 in 4 Filipinos still satisfied with democracy

MANILA, Philippines — An overwhelming majority of Filipinos are satisfied with how democracy works in the Philippines, according to the Social Weather Stations’ poll released during the country’s 120th Independence Day celebration.

Seventy-eight percent of adult Filipinos expressed satisfaction with the way democracy works in the country.

The satisfaction with democracy dropped two points from the 80 percent logged in June last year.

Public satisfaction with the way democracy works reached its record-high 86 percent in September 2016 following the “successful” May 2016 national elections, the polling firm noted.

“The question on ‘satisfaction in the way democracy works’ originated in the Eurobarometer surveys and is also in standard use in Latin American and Asian barometer projects,” SWS said.

Democracy remains best form of gov’t for Filipinos

The same survey also found that majority of Filipinos prefer democracy over other forms of government.

Sixty percent said that “democracy is always preferable to any kind of government.” The proportion barely moved from the 61 percent recorded in June 2017.

Meanwhile, the preference for authoritarian government remained steady at 19 percent from September 2016 to March 2018.

Those who said “for people like me, it does not matter whether we have democratic or a non-democratic regime” hardly moved to 21 percent in March 2018 from 20 percent in June 2017.

The survey was conducted from March 23 to 27 using face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adults.

It has sampling error margins of ±3 percent for national percentages, and ±6 percent each for Metro Manila, Balance Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.