‘Lifting Emergency will further endear him to public’ :

President’s leadership role endorsed by 91 percent of Lankans - Gallup poll

Ninety-one percent of Sri Lankans have endorsed President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s performance in office in the two years following the defeat of LTTE terrorism, an independent poll conducted by Gallup has revealed.

“President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s decision last week to lift the country’s 28-year-old state of emergency will likely further endear him to a public that almost universally supports him,” Peter Cynkar of Gallup Polls wrote in the Gallup Management Journal, which published the survey yesterday.

Gallup, one of the top polls firms in the world, published the report under the headline, “Sri Lankans back their President amid Western Criticism”.

Noting that nine out of 10 Sri Lankans had endorsed President Rajapaksa’s leadership role as per the survey, Cynkar said the Lankans’ approval of their President’s job performance reflects their happiness to finally have peace in their country and a vision to rebuild of their nation.

“The Government’s lifting of emergency laws has earned praise from the United States and other Western nations and suggests Sri Lanka is trying to leave its violent past behind. It will be imperative for the Sri Lankan Government to use this political capital as it works to resolve problems in the country and reintegrate disenfranchised portions of the population,” the Pollster said.

The survey revealed that the President’s popularity reached a peak (94 percent) in 2009 after the victory over the LTTE. It remained at 91 percent in 2010 and 2011.

These figures are a considerable increase in his 2008 popularity rating of 78 percent. Only 6 percent of those surveyed disapproved of his performance in 2011, while 3 percent had apparently remained non-committal.

The poll also found that Sri Lankans are less enamoured with other countries’ leadership, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia and China, although many don’t know enough about them to offer an opinion.

“The US leadership, which has been one of the more vocal critics of the Sri Lankan Government’s efforts to investigate alleged human rights violations in the final stages of the war, has lost favour. Twenty-four percent of Sri Lankans say they approve of the US leadership, down 12 percentage points from 36 percent in 2008 and 2009,” the poll disclosed.

More Sri Lankans approve of China’s leadership than that of the US, and, while they are more divided about some Western countries’ leadership, they are still more likely to approve than disapprove of China’s leadership.

The results of the surveys are based on 1,000 face-to-face interviews with adults, aged 15 or more, conducted in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Gallup said that for results based on total sample of national adults, one can say with 95 percent confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4.1 percentage points. The margin of error reflects the influence of data weighting.