A slight majority of people say they have little or no confidence in the senators to be acquired under the 2017 constitution, reasoning that the senators will come from a selection process without public participation, according to the result of an opinion survey by the National Institute for Development Administration, or Nida Poll.
The poll was conducted on Oct 10-12 on 1,259 people aged 18 and over of various levels of education and occupations throughout the country after the Election Commission resolved to begin the process of selecting 250 members of the Senate before the next general election tentatively set for Feb 24, 2019.
Of the 250 senators, six will be ex-officio members, 50 selected from 200 elected applicants and 194 chosen from a list of “people suitable to become senators” submitted by a selection committee. The six ex-officio senators are the commanders-in-chief of the three Armed Forces, the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, the national police chief and the permanent secretary to the Defence Ministry.
Asked whether they were 'confident' in the senators chosen in the selection process under the 2017 constitution, a slight majority - 51.39% - said "no". Of these, 36.41% had little confidence and 14.93% had no confidence at all.
On the other hand, 46.23% of the respondents said "yes" - with 16.28% saying that they had a lot of confidence and 29.95% said they had fairly high confidence - while 2.38% were uncertain or had no comment.
Those with little or no confidence said since the senators will not be elected by the general public, they doubt whether they would truly work for the people and the country, rather than for personal gain.
A large majority - 87.29% - of the respondents agreed with the Election Commission's decision to start the senator selection process early, saying that they want to see forward momentum as the country is now ready for an election; 11.36% disagreed, reasoning that if the selection process is rushed, it may be unfair and lead to mistakes, causing unqualified people being selected, and 1.35% were uncertain or had no comment.
