MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lacalle the best, Maduro the worst - says survey of how LatAm Presidents have handled the covid-19 pandemic

68% were the positive votes of Lacalle and the negative ones of Fernández (L)

Uruguayan President Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou was Latin America's best president when it came down to handling the coronavirus pandemic, a study by the international consulting firm Ipsos released over the weekend has shown.

On the other hand, Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro was the worst of them all, with a 90% disapproval and 6% approval, according to the same report.

The survey was carried out among 380 opinion leaders and journalists from 14 countries.

From bottom to top and slightly above Maduro was Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro with 14% approval and 85% disapproval.

Those losing ground were Argentina's Alberto Fernández from 43% approval to 29%, Colombia's Iván Duque from 46% to 33% and Cuba's Miguel Díaz-Canel from 26% to 19%.

Chile's Sebastián Piñera took second-best place with 50% positive votes but also with a 48% rejection.

Guillermo Lasso of Ecuador came in third with a 47% approval and a 32% rejection. But these ratings are somehow arguable, since Lasso has been in office for slightly over two months.

Bolivia's Luis Arce had a 38% acceptance and a 45 rejection while Peru's outgoing intyerim President Francisco Sagasti gathered 35% positive votes against 43% negative.

The achievements by Iván Duque of Colombia were validated by 33% of the people interviewed by the reasearch firm, while 63% found them negative.

Behind them came Laurentino Cortizo (Panama 32%+ / 23%-); Alberto Fernández (Argentina 29%+ / 68%-), Manuel López Obrador (Mexico, 27%+ / 21%-), and Miguel Díaz-Canel (Cuba 19%+ / 68%-)

Lacalle improved his ratings from March 2020 when he took office from 59% to 68% while Fernández fell from 49% to 29%.

Between November 2018 and July 2021, Piñera scored 64% and fell to 50%; Duque, also fell from 57% to 33%; López Obrador, from 60% to 27%; Díaz-Canel, from 23% to 19%; Bolsonaro, from 25% to 14% and Maduro rose from 3% to 6%.

When the management oif the panbdemic was measured by countries, Chile ranked with 76%, followed by Uruguay 73%, Colombia 45%, Cuba 41%, Argentina 36%, Panama 32%, Ecuador 30% , Bolivia 29%, Mexico 23%, Peru 21%, Venezuela 9% and Brazil 4%.

Regarding the vaccination process, Chile also topped the list with 88% approval, followed by Uruguay 72%, Colombia 48%, Argentina 42%, Cuba 39%, Mexico 34%, Panama and Ecuador 33% each, Peru 31%, Bolivia 28%, Brazil 13% and Venezuela 8%.

Ipsos also explained that in the case of countries where there have been changes of Heads of State in recent months -such as Ecuador with Guillermo Lasso and Peru with Francisco Sagasti- there is a more favorable evaluation of the performance of the presidents and the vaccination processes within their own countries while the external perception may remian influenced by the image left by the outgoing leaders.

In Latin America there have been around 40,179,000 documented infections and 1,354,000 deaths out of more than 4,000,000 deaths worldwide.