MEXICO CITY – Salvadoran President Maurico Funes is the most popular president in all of the Americas, while Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega ranks at the bottom of the list, according to a hemisphere-wide opinion poll released April 5 by the Mexican firm Mitofsky Consultants.
Funes, who has been in office for nine months, leads all presidents with an 83 percent approval rating, followed by Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with 76 percent approval, and Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli with 69 percent.
Martinelli, despite ranking in third place, has dipped considerably from a Mitofsky poll published just three months ago, which showed his approval rating at 91 percent.
The worst-ranked leaders in the hemisphere are Nicaragua’s Ortega, Peru’s Alan GarcÃa and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, all of whom registered a 26 percent approval rating.
Leading in popularity behind Martinelli are Bolivia’s Evo Morales, with a 66 percent, and Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe, with 63 percent. The most notable increase in the poll goes to Argentina’s Christina Fernández, whose previous 19 percent approval rating has climbed to 35 percent.
Running in the middle of the pact are U.S. President Barack Obama (48 percent), Guatemala’s Alvaro Colom (43 percent) and Costa Rica’s Oscar Arias (42 percent). Polling data from Honduras, Venezuela and Chile was not available.
–EFE
