Musharraf, Bush ranked most distrusted global leaders

17 June 2008

A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 20 nations around the world finds that none of the national leaders on the world stage inspire wide confidence. While US President George W. Bush is one of the least trusted leaders, no other leader-including China's Hu Jintao and Russia's Vladimir Putin-has gained a broad international base of support. As Newsweek put it, "In a sense, they're all Bushes now."

Only UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon received largely positive ratings, while Vladimir Putin, Gordon Brown and Hu Jintao, low as their poll ratings were, emerged as the least mistrusted. President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistani  had the poorest ratings around the world. Prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh did not fogure on the list of leaders to be voted as he was ranked as a regional leader from Asia and was polled only from among Asian countries.

The leaders selected for a vote were:

President George W. Bush                  United States
President Nicolas Sarkozy                   France
Prime Minister Gordon Brown            Great Britain
President Vladimir Putin                      Russia
Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon         United Nations
President Hu Jintao                              China
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad         Iran
President Pervez Musharraf                  Pakistan

UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon received largely positive ratings in a worldwide poll that asked respondents whether they trusted international leaders ''to do the right thing regarding world affairs.'' WorldPublicOpinion.org conducted the poll of 19,751 respondents in nations that comprise 60 per cent of the world's population. This includes most of the largest nations-China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Russia-as well as Mexico, Argentina, Britain, France, Spain, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Egypt, Jordan, Iran,Turkey, the Palestinian territories, South Korea and Thailand. Fielding was conducted between January 10 and May 6. The margins of error range from +/-2 to 4 percent.

WorldPublicOpinion.org, a collaborative research project involving research centers from around the world, is managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland. Sixteen of the 20 publics surveyed say they lack confidence in US President George W.Bush. Only Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf is rated negatively in more nations.