CRTA: 80 Percent of People in Serbia Support Most Student Protest Demands

Student protest(BETAPHOTO/SASA DJORDJEVIC)

Around 80 percent of Serbian citizens support most student protest demands, and one third has taken part in the ongoing protests, a recent survey of the CRTA Research, Transparency and Accountability Center reveals as announced on Feb. 19.

According to the survey, 64 percent of citizens support the university student protests, and the largest growth of that support over the past month was among the supporters of the parties in power. According to CRTA, one in five supporters of the parties in power now support the protests, and this number is up by half since late December.

Of them, 46 percent believe Serbia is going in the right direction, while 38 percent believe the opposite. "The growing optimism about the future of the country, according to the data from the survey, clearly comes from the energy brought by student protests, not from trust in state policy or the state of the economy," CRTA said.

Almost 60 percent of citizens trust the students, and the same number believes that the president of Serbia does not have the jurisdiction to address the student demands, the survey has shown. More than one half of citizens (52 percent) share the position that the student demands have not been met, believing that the students and university school representatives are the only ones called upon to assess if the demands have been met. The survey was conducted by phone on a sample of 1,065 citizens from Feb. 8 to 13.