Leadership check in 2020: from Merkel to Trump
The last days of the year have left us with the usual balance sheets of what has happened in the world in the last twelve months. A year that has been pierced by the crisis like a spear in the side of humanity, in which nothing was the same after that fateful month of March. The questioning of leadership has been commonplace and even healthy during the pandemic; the permanent check on the results of political and health management that depends on governments has enabled citizens to make a reasoned and reasonable judgement on what each has done when it comes to tackling the most delicate public health situation of the past century, to say the least.
In Atalayar de Capital Radio, the space that every Monday night analyses and scrutinises international relations and geopolitics, we have also wanted to check the management of the main world leaders in a survey carried out at the microphone among some twenty experts from this digital atalayar.com, regular commentators on the radio space and now converted into "classics" for our listeners. The proposal was simple but full of symbolism: to choose from among all the leaders who have had responsibilities this year the one who has done best and the one who has faced the worst from power. Two names, placed on a virtual ballot, to choose the one who has acquired the most merit and the one who has done the least in this cursed year with which we inaugurated the decade of the 20's. The proposal had no limits: with a handful of obvious names on the table, analysts could freely select the best and worst leader of the year from the almost two hundred countries on the planet. And the result, while predictable, had some notable elements.
The German Chancellor was the most voted by all the specialists in the programme. Her advantage over the second, another woman who has surprised the world by the natural and direct way in which she has dealt with the problem of the virus, the New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden, is unquestionable. Ten votes against seven. Two women received the most votes, confirming the impression of the UN, CNN and Forbes that they have managed the pandemic in their countries with much better results. The merit of the chancellor is twofold, because her forthcoming departure from government and politics confirms that she had no interest, let alone electoral interest, in taking the decisions she has taken to curb the spread of the disease.
Among those voted for as best leader of the year were also the votes for the president of the United Arab Emirates, Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who is responsible for a very interesting modernisation and opening up of his country, and the Russian president Vladimir Putin, who, curiously enough, was elected in both categories as best and worst leader of the year.
In these times of polarisation it is dangerous to say anything good about leaders who are considered heroes or villains in the way that the still president of the United States is. Since we announced the vote on Monday night there have been disqualifying messages for this small poll for putting Trump as the leader worst valued by Atalayar analysts, but this is the price that is paid for having any initiative in these times of strong world division. Little do those who make such criticism remember the fiascos of the US president in assessing the importance of the virus and its deadly effect? The truth is that Trump has won this dubious classification by a single vote from Nicolas Maduro, who for a significant proportion of the experts has been the worst for his way of screwing himself into power and treating his own people. The worst were also for some of the voters the Turkish Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Belarusian Aleksander Lukashenko, the Spanish Pedro Sánchez or the Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro. A "more distributed" prize, as one would say in terms of lotteries, but which, whether we like it or not, places the leader of the world's leading power at the top of the list of those most rejected by Atalayar's staff at Capital Radio.