Zee Beam News

Dec. 29, 2006 - Kommersant by Mikhail Zygar - // On the list of the world's least popular leader
Harris international pollsters have completed a survey of citizens of the United States and the European Union on world leaders. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was chosen the best leader by a majority. U.S. President George W. Bush came in last. He was followed by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Satellite television channel France 24 commissioned Harris to conduct a yearend poll. Residents of Great Britain, the U.S., France, Italy, Spain and Germany took part. There were 2000 respondents from each country who were chosen by sex, age, race and social status. They were asked to identify the most important event of the year, to express their opinions of world leaders and to address various international problems. The most important event of the year for those Westerners was the war in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah. That event was listed first by the most French (22%), Italians (18%) and Spanish (20%). In Germany and Britain, North Korea's appearance among the nuclear powers rated first (20% and 19%, respectively). In the U.S., 27 percent of respondents named the Democratic defeat of the Republicans in the congressional elections the event of the year, although nearly as many indicated the nuclear tests in North Korea. The murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya ranked tenth place (from 5% in Italy to 1% in the U.S.). The rating of world leaders was a surprise. Angela Merkel topped the list, finding favor among Italians (61%), Spaniards (60%), French (57%) and Germans (51%). Her negative rating was miniscule. The world's worst politician, according to the poll's findings, was George W. Bush. Antipathy toward him ranged from 56 percent in the U.S. to 87 percent in France and Germany and 88 percent in Spain. He was followed by the president of Iran, whose popularity in the U.S. was 6 percent. It was even lower in Europe. Putin, the third least popular politician in the poll, does have supporters in the West. They were most common in Germany (21%) and, oddly, the U.S. (18%). In all of the countries in the poll except the U.S., many more respondents dislike Putin than Ahmadinejad. In France, 73% of respondents dislike Putin (as compared to 60% who dislike Ahmadinejad), in Britain 60% (with 53% against Ahmadinejad) and in Spain 80% (with 70% against Ahmadinejad). While Putin has more supporters in the West than Bush, he trails behind such leaders as Hugo Chavez (except among the Spanish) and Fidel Castro (except among the Spanish and Americans). All respondents were asked about the Iranian crisis, the war in Iraq and the sentencing of Saddam Hussein. The majority of residents of every country thought that Hussein should be hanged, that foreign forces should be withdrawn from Iraq and that the Iranian nuclear crisis should be resolved exclusively through diplomatic means. The pollsters determined that the margin of error in their work was 1.5 percent.