MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mercosur has top performing and worst performing presidents

Lula da Silva and Tabaré Vazquez

Two presidents from Mercosur countries figure among the leaders with the highest approval ratings in the Americas while the other two are at the opposite end.

Brazil’s Lula da Silva has a public opinion standing of 77% and Uruguay’s Tabare Vazquez 71% which compares most favourably with Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo, 25% and Cristina Kirchner from Argentina, 20%.

These are some of the results of surveys conducted by CID/Gallup, The Gallup Organization and other top line public opinion research companies operating throughout the Western Hemisphere using similar questions and samples with similar margins or error.

The ratings are all produced by interviewing the president’s own people and countries like Cuba which are not democratic are excluded because survey research is not possible in them. Surveys were conducted in the second semester of the year.

Top of the continental job performance ranking are Mauricio Funes from El Salvador with 85%; Ricardo Martinelli from Panama, 82% followed by outgoing Chilean leader Michelle Bachelet, 80%.

The next step corresponds to Brazil’s Lula da Silva, Uruguay’s Vazquez and Costa Rica’s Oscar Airas who has an approval rating of 73%.

Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe has an approval rating of 64%, followed by Bolivia’s Evo Morales with 57%, Guatemala’s Alvaro Colom, 55%, Mexico’s Felipe Calderón 54%, and Nobel Prize US president Barak Obama 53%.

The rest of presidents’ figure below 50%, among which Dominican Republic Leonel Fernandez, 47%, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, 46% and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, 44%.

History has shown that leaders that score under 50% approval have trouble re-electing themselves, and in many cases also encounter difficulties in maintaining their own political party in power.

In the thirties ranking are Peru’s Alan García with 36%; Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, 34%; Honduras de facto president Roberto Micheletti, 33% and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega with 30%. Bottom of the list are former bishop Lugo and Mrs. Kirchner.