Confidence cannot be decreed
Public favorability toward the Military Forces reached 81.4% and toward the National Police 69%, according to Invamer polling. Both are the highest levels recorded for either institution.
Of all the indicators in a defense sector, public confidence is the only one the institution cannot produce by its own decision. An operation can be ordered, a budget approved, a directive issued; belief cannot be ordered. That is why independent favorability polling is, in practice, the most severe external assessment any armed force receives: a third party conducts it, with its own methodology, and the result is published whatever it says.
The figures
According to Invamer polling, favorability toward the Military Forces rose from 68.6% in 2022 to 81.4% in 2026. For the National Police, it rose from 58.3% to 69% over the same period. Both are the highest levels recorded for those institutions.
Two institutions, one movement
The most telling feature of the data is not which institution scores higher, but that both rise at once and by comparable margins. Colombian public opinion rarely moves as a bloc where its institutions are concerned: it tends to reward one and punish another depending on the month's headlines. A simultaneous, sustained improvement across four years points to something other than a favorable news cycle.
Why this belongs under transparency
Institutional legitimacy, as the sector's own review puts it, is a security outcome. The connection is not rhetorical: a force citizens trust receives information, reports and cooperation that a distrusted force does not, and that information converts into operational capacity. The indicators in this section — human rights complaints, the handling of public protest, reporting channels — are precisely the ones that build or erode that trust. That is why the 81.4% is published here rather than among operational results: it is the outcome measure for everything else.
