Television personality Andy Rooney said some years ago in one of his commentaries on the CBS show ‘60 Minutes’ that anyone who chose to run for president/leader of a country had to have a high opinion of him/herself. He may also have mentioned the word conceit. Mr Rooney’s tongue-in-cheek commentaries have made viewers smile, laugh, nod in agreement and raise their eyebrows over the years, and have never really been far off the mark.
The current crop of world leaders would provide more than adequate fodder for Mr Rooney’s wit.
Take Italy’s controversial and colourful Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as an example. An extremely wealthy man, said to be a billionaire in fact, Mr Berlusconi’s business empire – acquired before he became prime minister – includes media, advertising, insurance, food, construction and Italy’s most successful football club, AC Milan. He recently announced that an opinion poll had given him a popularity rating of 75% — ahead of Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at 70-something per cent and US President Barack Obama at 69% — but has not produced or pointed to the source of this information. However, if the opinions sought were those of actresses, starlets and models, then there should be no questions asked as Mr Berlusconi is extremely popular among these groups, and has been said to have a “self-declared weakness for actresses in the bloom of youth.” Mr Berlusconi’s wife recently commenced divorce proceedings against him.
Then there is Paraguay’s prolific President Fernando Lugo. A former Roman Catholic Bishop, he promised to be a moral force for change and to clean up Paraguay’s corrupt politics and was elected president only last year. However, just last month, three women have come forward claiming that Mr Lugo fathered their children — aged six years old, two years old and 16 months old —while he was still a cleric. He has since admitted that one of the children is his, but has not denied fathering the other two. Despite the ribald jokes that have been going around the world about this priest’s popularity, Paraguay, though a very conservative, Catholic country is also very patriarchal. Therefore, Mr Lugo’s peccadilloes are likely to be overlooked. Though one wonders how far the Paraguayans are likely to go on overlooking should the number of children and mothers continue to rise.
One has no doubt too, that our flamboyant close neighbour, President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez, considers himself to be high up in the popularity ratings. Mr Chávez recently made himself eligible to be president for the rest of his life – a la his mentor Fidel Castro of Cuba — by way of a referendum which he won. However, despite his own inflated opinion of himself, news from Venezuela indicates that he inspires both adulation and loathing among his people, and not always in equal amounts.
Our own president would probably be hard-pressed to win any popularity contests either at home or abroad. He has had a rough year so far in terms of his public image. The allegations of mental, emotional and psychological abuse by his former wife did a lot of damage and were helped by his implacable approach to the issue. The recent passing in Parliament of the presidential pension bill would have dealt him another huge blow, and the year is not yet over. However, that is not to say that he could not win another election, if it were at all possible, as strange as that might seem.
The truth is that it is not only the popular who win people over; the infamous are quite adept at it as well.
