More than three-quarters of people surveyed in the latest Bangkok Poll said they would reject the government's populist policies if they also bring about corruption.
The survey on Bangkokians' thoughts on ways to solve corruption during the Yingluck government involved 1,039 respondents aged over 18 in the capital city.
The pollster said 79.1% of the respondents were against the government's populist policies if they come with corruption, but 20.9% said they would still accept them.
As for the root cause of corruption in Thai society, 62.9% blamed national-level lawmakers (MPs and senators). Others blamed local politicians (officials in tambon and provincial levels).
Cabinet ministers attend a workshop to boost counter-corruption efforts on May 19, 2012. (Photo by Chanat Katanyu)
When asked to select politicians thought are most honest, 35% chose Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, 32.3% chose Democrat Party chief adviser Chuan Leekpai and 14.6% went for opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva.
The respondents also pointed out that some of the laws had loopholes and were outdated.
About 88% believed corruption in Thailand was at its highest level, while 12% believed it was still at a minimum; 64.2% thought the government did not give importance to the corruption problem; 35.8% said the government gave utmost importance to the issue.
Asked it they were satisfied with the government's actions against corruption only 30.1% said yes, while 69.9% were not satisfied.
Bangkok Poll said 51.8% viewed that the government's rice pledging scheme was the most corrupt, followed by the disaster relief and water management projects (19.3%) and the one tablet PC per child scheme.
When asked about the impact on investment if Thailand fails to deal with corruption after the launch of the Asean Economic Community (AEC), 83.7% said the country's investment sector would be hardest hit, 14.6% believed the impact would be minimum.
Thailand has slid to 88th place out of 176 in the 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index compiled by Berlin-based Transparency International, scoring 37 out of 100, sharing the same score and ranking with Malawi, Morocco, Suriname, Swaziland and Zambia.
The global anti-corruption organisation has changed its methodology for ranking the 176 countries this year, from previously scoring them on a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 10 (highly clean) to 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (highly clean).
The kingdom ranked 80th among 183 countries listed in the 2011 corruption index, with a score of 3.4.