Comment
 

(Lack of) Trust

Apart from the protests and blockages, the civil initiatives, spring actions and the dissatisfaction, this month was marked with another research which warns us in time (UNDP report on in-time warning is a result of the regular, quarterly researches).

Expecting the Aril Fools’ Day, the report has opened a number of serious issues of our social living. One of them is the relation with the citizens and their trust.

After a long time, the research covers both the civic initiatives and the civil society associations. According to it, the civic initiatives enjoy big trust among 6% the Macedonian citizens, that is partial trust among 28.7% of them. The civil society organizations enjoy big trust among 3.9% of the citizens and partial trust among 24.8% of them. Although the report shows a slight increase of trust in the civil society organizations, what concerns is the comparison of this data with the data of the research on the Civil Society Index in Macedonia (done in 2004/05), where the civil society organizations enjoyed big trust among 13.7% of the citizens and partial trust among 41% of them.

The reasons for this need to be elaborated further, but to a great extent they lie in the civil sector (a low level of democracy - a low level of transparency - a low level of trust – a low level of civic activism). The already realized low level of civic activism should have been enough to show us that we are facing problems concerning the trust.

The return of the trust is no doubt supposed to be the new challenge for the civil society organizations. In a situation where we are facing a decrease in the trust of all institutions, besides the religious ones, the civil society organizations have to offer the citizens the missing alternative.

Just to compare, one in every four citizens in Macedonia is a member of some civil society organization (25%), as opposed to the global trend which is 75%. This is of course related to the trust that the citizens from the European countries have in the civil society organizations. In that direction are the data from the last research done with 800 young people from 11 European countries, according to which the young Europeans believe that working for a civil society organization is more efficient than working for any of the political parties.

We will need to put great effort in order to reach that level of trust and engagement in the civil sector, but for where we are heading we need active citizens who create their own destiny.

 

Gonce Jakovleska