This trend was consolidated in the first months of 2022, according to a report by the Argentine NGO Legislative Directory. Pedro Castillo (Peru), Iván Duque (Colombia) and Alberto Fernández (Argentina), the presidents with the worst image in the last two months
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The “Image of Power” report, prepared by the Argentine non-governmental organization Legislative Directory, concluded that in the first months of 2022, in most Latin American countries, high or low levels of disapproval continued to rise. very high with respect to their governments.
Even those heads of state who are going through the initial stage of their mandates have experienced accelerated declines in approval.
“There is a very solid trend evidenced in high disapprovals -above the approval levels-, in most of the presidencies of the region”, explained Mario Riorda, president of the Latin American Association of Research in Campaigns Electoral and director of the Master’s in Political Communication at the Austral University, when analyzing the results of the report.
As indicated, this trend “is a novelty” in the region. For seven years, from 2002 to 2009, government approval, on average, increased from 36% to 60% among the 18 Latin American presidents. However, that panorama began to change as of 2010.
Riorda mentioned two phenomena that currently come together in the region: rapid drops in approval ratings at the start of government mandates; and consolidated disapprovals in “taxed or hyper-aggravated” formats.
He also pointed out that, “the economic situation, the media systems, the social actors, all have affected and contributed to each situation”.
The ranking of Latin American presidents with the highest level of approval is led by the Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador (56%), followed by the Uruguayan Luis Lacalle Pou (50%), the Chilean Gabriel Boric (39%), the Ecuadorian Guillermo Lasso (32%). ), the Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro (30%), the Colombian Iván Duque (26%), the Argentine Alberto Fernández (25%) and the Peruvian Pedro Castillo (22%).
Meanwhile, the list of disapproval is headed by Castillo (71%), followed by Duque (69%), Fernández (60%), Bolsonaro (53%), López Obrador (41%) and Boric (41%).
The report shows that, in net terms, discounting the percentage of disapproval from the percentage of approval, only López Obrador was in positive territory, with 15%. While the highest net level of disapproval is held by Castillo (-49%), followed by Duque (-39%), Fernández (-35%), Bolsonaro (-23%) and Boric (-2%).
These data correspond to the last bimonthly measurements of the March-April period. In the January-February period, the leaders with the best image in the region were Nayib Bukele, from El Salvador, with 84%, and Luis Abinader, from the Dominican Republic, with 67%. However, in these two countries there is no data recorded in the last two months.
In the cases of the dictators Nicolás Maduro and Daniel Ortega there is little data. The last record of the Venezuelan is from the two-month period November-December 2020, when he reported a negative image of 82%. In the case of the Nicaraguan, between September and October of last year, disapproval of his management amounted to 64%, according to the Legislative Directory report.
“Those who are doing poorly in terms of public opinion have not known how to surf governability in the context of broken party political systems. Atomization has generated expectations that were not easy to satisfy. And the historical political parties are no longer enough to sustain governability or else, strong leaderships of the past, accompanying, have not known how to contribute positively in these processes, such as Colombia, Argentina and Bolivia, for example, “said Riorda.
The president of the Latin American Association of Electoral Campaign Researchers pointed out thatthe leaders who are doing poorly in terms of public opinion sometimes carried out “closed leadership”, governing “tribally with closed, dogmatic, inflexible, excluding dynamics, as in the Brazilian case.” In other cases , for their part, “have failed to recognize that they arrived because their predecessors were very bad, not on their own merits.” On other occasions “they have been pure shell”, an “advertising product that had nothing to do with a government project”.
“Many who reach the government suffer it, they suffer it. And society too,” Riorda said.
In his opinion, leaders who can be defined as populist, such as the cases of López Obrador in Mexico, and Bukele in El Salvador, “usually have, in the short term, positive effects, raising confidence in democracy.”
When Riorda warns that historical political parties are no longer enough to sustain governability, one of the most current cases that demonstrates this is that of Argentina, where the differences between the sectors most aligned with President Alberto Fernández and those behind Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner are growing larger. This fracture, aggravated by the different perspectives on the economic plan, added to the high inflation rates and the poor results obtained by the ruling party in the last mid-term elections led the Argentine president to stand on the podium of the leaders with greater disapproval.
In Chile, for its part, although President Boric “tried to gain political and legislative muscle” by adding officials from various spaces to his cabinet, The first months of the young president have not been easy. On the one hand, the economic outlook is grim, with inflation estimated at 10%. The Executive is also facing an escalation of violence in the south of the country, as a result of conflicts with the Mapuche, and discontent with the constitutional reform process.
“Boric has tried at all costs to avoid the declaration of a state of emergency in the regions of Araucanía and Biobío, hot zones of the Mapuche conflict, which he criticized so much from the opposition. However, his proposal to establish an “intermediate state of protection and shelter” failed due to lack of agreements within the government coalition itself. Thus, and under pressure from the transport unions, it declared a state of emergency, although it was limited to routes and roads,” the report states.
Other countries where In recent months, problems have grown due to insecurity and the state of emergency in El Salvador, Peru, Ecuador and Costa Rica. Perhaps the case of greatest concern is that of El Salvador, where in March a series of murders and violent episodes attributed to the Mara Salvatrucha criminal organization “shocked the public and altered internal order.” For this reason, Bukele declared a state of emergency in the country.
“To date, more than 30,000 arrests have been made, according to information from the government itself, but also Cases of torture and death have been reported during the period of apprehension and lack of information on the situation and location of the detainees,” points out the Legislative Directory study that, at the same time, recalls that the Salvadoran Government also advanced in Congress “with the sanction of laws that are harmful to freedom of expression and the right to information.”
The parliamentarians who respond to Bukele approved in the Assembly a “ gag law” that penalizes with 10 to 15 years in prison the dissemination of messages alluding to criminal groups both through written media and digital media.
Infographics: Marcelo Regalado