Dusit Poll director Sukhum Chaloeysup said the index of public confidence in politics last month was 95.40, up 4.96 points from may but down 2.68 points from June last year.

Besides the royal celebrations, the World Cup 2006 helped distract people from politics. As a result, the index of people's unity increased by 13.5 points from May to 101.77 points, said Sukhum.

He said the unity index showed the biggest increase last month, while the index of country development increased by 8.18 points to 102.60 and the index of the opposition's achievement increased by 7.46 points to 96.19 points.

The survey was conducted from June 30-July 5 with 7,825 respondents around the country, he said.

The areas with indexes higher than 100 points included information in the media, education for people, prime minister's achievements, people and independent organisations' political participation, national development, people's unity, government's achievements and national administration according to declared policies, he said.

However, the five areas with the lowest indexes were commodity prices, politicians' behaviour and their unity, national security and terrorism, corruption and people's cost of living, salaries, wages and welfare, he said.

Sukhum said the cases of electoral fraud against the Thai Rak Thai and Democrat parties, the reports on caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's letter to US President George W Bush, as well as reports of an assassination plot against Thaksin and the possible resignation of three ministers were likely to have an impact on next month's index.

Chonlawit Jianjit, a social science lecturer at Srinakharinwirot University, said the figures had improved as last month was an auspicious month, but warned the political conflict was likely to intensify as society had become sensitive to political news and Thaksin reacted emotionally and did not communicate carefully.

Nerisa Nerykhiew

The Nation