KYIV. Aug 5 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Some 36% of Ukrainians are ready to strengthen the powers of the president by switching to a presidential form of government, according to a sociological study conducted by the Info Sapiens research agency commissioned by the Centre of United Actions in April-May 2021 and presented at the Interfax-Ukraine agency.

"We asked Ukrainians what changes in the distribution of powers of the President, the Verkhovna Rada and the Cabinet of Ministers they would like to see in ten years. Only 22% of citizens are ready to strengthen the Rada and the Cabinet and reduce the influence of the President. Another 27.5% of citizens are sure that the powers of institutions should remain the same as they are now. But most (36%) are in favor of strengthening the powers of the president and reducing the influence of the Rada and the Cabinet of Ministers," head of the analytical team of the Centre of United Actions Maria Levonova said at a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine agency on Thursday.

At the same time, according to the poll, 25% of respondents are ready to strengthen the president by switching to a presidential form of government, 19% of those surveyed are supporters of a parliamentary form of government, and another 15% would like to weaken the powers of the president, but in the current form of government.

According to the research, Kyiv (27%) and the Central Region (23%) are supporters of the transition to a parliamentary republic. Older citizens (27%) and those with higher education (22%) are more inclined to move towards collegial decisions, that is, towards parliamentarism. At the same time, villagers are more inclined to the idea of ​​a presidential republic (28%), in contrast to large cities, where only one in five supports this form of government.

In addition, according to the results of focus groups, citizens are convinced that the main problem is not in the distribution of powers, but in the failure to fulfill existing functions and insufficient responsibility of politicians and officials. At the same time, a significant part of the respondents are aware of the risk of excessive concentration of power in one hand and are mainly opponents of the purely presidential model.

The survey was conducted in two waves: the CATI method (telephone interviews with calls to mobile phone numbers, computer-assisted telephone interviews) on April 19-27, 2021 and the CAPI method (personal interviews at home with a respondent using a tablet, computer-assisted personal interviews) on May 7-27, 2021.

The sample of the conducted research is 2,000 respondents and is representative of the population of Ukraine aged 16 and over by gender, age, size of the settlement and region according to the State Statistics Service as of January 1, 2019. The maximum theoretical margin is 2.2%.