You need not be surprised much when you hear world’s leading leaders enjoy the wide confidence among the people. However, two leaders, i.e. the US President George W Bush and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf – one from the west and the other from the east – are among the world's least trusted leaders, a survey released on Monday showed.
The survey, conducted in 20 countries by WorldPublicOpinion.org, a Washington based international collaborative project aims to give voice to public opinion around the world on international issues. The survey was carried out on 19,751 respondents in countries comprising 60 per cent of the world population. January 10 and May 6, 2008.
The only leader who got more positive than the negative one, i.e. 9 against 8 is the UN Secretary General, Ban-Ki-Moon. But he belongs to a common world body rather than an individual country.
Except India and Nigeria giving Bush positive ratings, 16 out of 20 countries surveyed say they lack confidence in the US President. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has the poorest ratings around the world though in China he fares well with 37 percent positive views vis-à-vis 30 percent negative ratings. Bush also got the highest average percentage of negative ratings (67 per cent). "While the worldwide mistrust of George Bush has created a global leadership vacuum, no alternative leader has stepped into the breach," said Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org.
In reply to the question, how much confidence you have in each leader to do the right thing regarding the world affairs, while Bush gets negative ratings in 16 countries, his Pakistani counterpart tops the list by 18 negative ratings. After Bush and Musharraf, Iran's Ahmadinejad and Sarkozy of France are at the third place on the least trusted list with 15 nations giving negative rating though Nicholas Sarkozy got positive ratings from 4 nations, while Ahmadinejad from only 3. Although confidence in Ahmadinejad is up slightly from polling conducted by Pew in 2007, he is still far from being viewed as a credible leader, even in the Muslim world.
Hu Jitao of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Gordon Brown of UK, leaders of three most powerful nations, got 13, 11 and 11 points on negative ratings though Brown has received positive ratings from 6 nations. On average 44 per cent of those surveyed around the world show little or no confidence in the Chinese leader. Only 28 per cent express some or a lot of confidence. In all cases the leader's own public is excluded from the count of countries and the average rating.
On Indians on world leaders, Musharraf gets 54 negative ratings while Bush and Putin receive better positive ratings of 45 and 44 respectively. In this category, even Chinese President gets 32 negative rating as against 30 positive ratings. Iran’s Ahmadinejad also fares better with 26 negative and 35 positive ratings. The UN Secretary General also receives better rating in India.
On Indians on regional leaders, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh gets 53 positive and 29 negative ratings, while Kim Jong-II of Myanmar is at the bottom with 22 negative ratings. Overall, Indians are neutral while rating regional leaders.
From the survey findings, it is clear that world lacks global level leaders who enjoy confidence of the people except for the UN Secretary General.
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