Critical thinking
This topic shows you how to think critically, find hidden contexts and read between the lines
Practical task – manipulative techniques
Read this press release with reaction of the head of the Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic, Štefan Harabin, about the results of public opinion survey related to the credibility of Slovak judiciary. Then read two other articles related to that. Finally try to identify manipulative techniques he has used and answer the questions below.
Article 1: Opinion polls about judiciary in Slovakia are not objective
President of the Supreme Court of Slovak Republic Štefan Harabin claims that public opinion polls about judiciary in Slovakia are not objective. The proofs should be the polls of Polis agency and MVK agency published two days from each other.
(1) “According to one agency 58 percent of people do not trust me, but according to another one it is only 2.6 percent. This cannot be called a statistical error. This is a clear example of manipulation and untrustworthiness,“ said the president of the Supreme Court of Slovak Republic Štefan Harabin.
(2) According to his words, citizens are rightfully complaining about low enforceability of law, because with the huge rise in lawsuits the courts have no chance to deal with them in an appropriate time. Legislative changes written by Lucia Žitňanská made court presidents into dummies, so they cannot deal with the situation, put disciplinary senates out of function, reduced the number of judges and made a whole lot of other wrong steps present.
(3) “Instead of solving problems, part of the politicians is searching for a public enemy. Perhaps it would be time to have a survey made about my own person, Like Mr. Lipšic did for state money, the limit is clear – up to 2,4 milion kronas. But I do not plan to act so immorally,” finished Harabin.
VIA IURIS published today the results of a representative quantitative survey by FOCUS agency. This kind of survey has not been requested before in Slovakia. Low trustworthiness of the judiciary branch is a long-term problem of Slovak Republic.
Basic findings of the survey related to Štefan Harabin:
- More than half of the respondents (58%) express agreement with the opinion that the president of the Supreme Court of Slovak Republic, Štefan Harabin, is rather adding to the untrustworthiness of Slovak judiciary.
- The opposing view, i.e. that Štefan Harabin is adding to trustworthiness of the judiciary, was expressed only by 3% of the respondents.
- Approximately one fifth of respondents (22%) leaned towards the opinion, that the current president of the Supreme Court has no effect on the trustworthiness of courts.
- Almost one fifth of the respondents (17%) replied they could not answer the question.
VIA IURIS published already in May 2013 part of the results of this survey on public perception of the judiciary, the results of which show, that over two-thirds (69%) of the respondents do not trust Slovak courts. In the eyes of the public distrust to courts outbalances trust in the judiciary very significantly.
Article 2: Which politician is the most disgraceful?
The most trusted politician in Slovakia is still the leader of Smer-SD and the Prime Minister Robert Fico. The data comes from a public opinion survey which was realised by the MVK agency between 2nd and 8th July on a sample of 1077 respondents.
Respondents also replied the question “Which politicians are causing serious trouble and spoil the political culture the most?” Again, each respondent could spontaneously list three names.
This chart was won by Richard Sulík (24.9%) followed by Robert Fico (22.5%), third was the ex-Prime Minister Mikuláš Dzurinda (18.9%).
The top ten was also made by the former leader of SNS Ján Slota (18.6), Ivan Gašparovič (12.9), Igor Matovič (12.4), Ján Figeľ (10.3), Béla Bugár (8.5), Pavol Hrušovský (8.3) and Róbert Kaliňák (6.9).
The other ten places below on the chart of the politicians most detrimental to political culture were held by Ivan Mikloš (6.7), Pavol Frešo (4.7), Dušan Čaplovič (4.6), ex-Minister of Labour Ľudovít Kaník (4.2), leader of ĽS-HZDS Vladimír Mečiar (3.7), Pavol Paška (3.6), Daniel Lipšic (3.3), honorary president of KDH Ján Čarnogurský (3.2), Peter Kažimír (2.8) and the president of the Supreme Court Štefan Harabin (2.6).