The latest round of surveys here by the Latin American Public Opinion (LAPOP) Project has found a decline in the approval rating of President Donald Ramotar and a sharp rise in those who think the economy worsened this year.
LAPOP, run by US university Vanderbilt, also found that trust had diminished in Parliament and referring to President Ramotar’s recent decision to suspend Parliament, disclosed that over the four years it has been asking the question, under 9% of people agreed that the legislature should be shut down in a time of crisis.
The programme which has been carrying out public opinion surveys in the Americas for over 30 years said that even though ratings in these categories had been relatively stable over the survey period from 2006, “our data reveal that the political outlook for the Guyanese regime suffered a moderate but general reversal in legitimacy levels in 2014”.
In each year of the survey, the LAPOP report said that respondents are asked “Speaking in general of the current administration, how would you rate the job performance of President (name provided)”.
The results as seen in Figure One show that mean values on approval of presidential performance rose after 2006 and then held constant until 2012. However, this year, the average dropped by six points in comparison with the previous survey year.
Considering what could have led to the decline, researchers Daniel Montalvo, Elizabeth Zechmeister and Mitchell Seligson said that some of it might be due to the “normal popularity erosion” that most newly-elected presidents face after the honeymoon period is over. It also noted that the 2012 survey occurred two months after Ramotar took up office.
“Nonetheless, this decrease could also be due to more structural factors, such as popular perception of economic performance, citizens sensing that the government may not be able to successfully negotiate agreements with opposition members in the parliament, or a broader public perception of a government inability to satisfy citizen demands”, the report said.
On the economic front, the report said that Guyana’s economy seemed to be faring well with national GDP growing at an average rate of 5.1% however citizen perceptions told a very different story.
“When asked `Do you think that the country’s current economic situation is better than, the same as or worse than it was 12 months ago?” …, 57% of respondents reported that the economy worsened in 2014. As Figure 2 illustrates, this percentage almost tripled since 2012, with these negative evaluations reaching by far their highest level in 2014 compared to recent years.
“Are these depressed economic evaluations the result of a recent shock in the real economy or a product of politics? Even though we are unable to provide a more nuanced answer in this short report, we can note that trust in the parliament has also decreased more than 13 points on a 0 to 100 scale between 2012 and 2104”, the report stated.
Figure 3 depicts the results of the question: “To what extent do you trust the Parliament? As Figure 3 shows, trust in Parliament slid from 59.60% in 2012 to 46.3% in 2014.
“Thus, we find that the current political upheaval in Guyana goes hand-in-hand with broad and increasing citizen dissatisfaction with Guyanese political institutions and what they are delivering”, the report said.
The report also interestingly said that in the 2010-2014 surveys, LAPOP had asked about citizen support for the shutting of Parliament by the President in periods of crisis. The question posed was “Do you believe that when the country is facing very difficult times it is justifiable for the president of the country to close the Parliament and govern without Parliament?”
The report said that across all years, fewer than 9% of Guyanese respondents said that such a manoeuvre would be justifiable.
“Thus, we conclude by noting that there is little reason to believe that the Guyanese public is likely to take recent events as a palliative to their brewing dissatisfaction”.
Funding for the 2014 LAPOP round came mainly from the United States Agency for International Development. Support also came from the Inter-American Development Bank and Vanderbilt University. The 2014 AmericasBarometer dataset will be available on December 1, 2014. Full results of the surveys can be found online at www.LapopSurveys.org
