President John Agyekum Kufuor scored 74% of the votes of respondents asked whether they have confidence in him while 51% of them said they trusted the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) government.

The president, in fact, “scored a very high 65% in his individual trust rating, with 35% of all respondents trusting him a lot, and a further 30% trusting him a very great deal,” an Afrobarometer Round Two survey organised by the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) reported.

Not all the things happening in the social, economic spheres were palatable to the cross-section of the populace interviewed though, as a staggering cumulative total of 85% of respondents scored their personal wealth between 0 and 5 on a scale of 0-10. Nearly two-thirds (64%) described their living conditions as bad, and the same number reported no improvement in their standard of living during the previous 12 months.

The survey sampled the opinions of 1,200 respondents in all the 10 regions of Ghana with the view to assessing political and economic conditions in the country, the extent to which democracy and market reforms were taking root in Ghana and to ascertain what the people say about the current political and economic developments in the country.

Respondents were picked in such a way that everybody, both rich and poor, literate and illiterate, stood an equal chance of being interviewed. Similar surveys were done in selected countries in the various sub-regions of the continent, which are currently engaged in democratic governance.

The Ghana survey clearly confirmed that there is a growing level of public confidence in political leaders. Professor Gyimah Boadi, the executive director of the CDD reported that, apart from the three-to-one majority chalked by President Kufuor he placed a respectable third across Africa in terms of job performance. He gave Sam Nujoma of Namibia-78% and Yuweri Museveni of Uganda - 74%. He beat Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria who got 72% and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa who made 51% of votes of respondents.

Performance of elected Members of Parliament (MP) now meets the expectation of Ghanaians more than some years ago. Fifty-seven per cent of respondents approved of the performance of MPs. “This was an inversion of the corresponding statistic from the 1999 Afrobarometer survey, in which an identical proportion were dissatisfied with their MP’s performance,” it reported. The report noted in a cross-country comparison that Uganda’s MPs currently enjoy 64%, quite higher than their Ghanaian counterparts.

Asked last September whether they perceive an improvement in the accountability of their political representatives, most (63%) felt they could commend the attention of their elected representatives. This, the report noted, was a “significant increase in the corresponding measure (49%) in the 1999 Afrobarometer survey, and was corroborated by the fact thsat 58% reported a sense that their influence over government decisions had increased.

Another morale booster for the government and its party was that when asked their party affiliation, 44% of respondents said the NPP; 15%-NDC; PNC-2; CPP-1 and all others-1. Experts, however, warn that identification with government parties in such surveys should be taken with a pinch of salt as some respondents might profess to affiliate with the ruling party while in actual fact they would be for any of the other parties.

Other highlights of the survey results were that 70% of respondents were relatively impressed with government’s efforts to combat corruption, 70% approved of the NPP administration’s handling of communal conflicts and the Office of the President was considered to be the least corrupt of all the official categories tested, with just 37% of respondents saying they thought at least some of the president’s staff were corrupt.

In spite of the generally positive responses about the government, the survey conducted by Afrobarometer 2 presents a picture of a great deal of dissatisfaction with economic conditions, persistent poverty and continuing ambivelence over key aspects of neo-liberal economic reforms. What most respondents expressed dissatisfaction with was the high level of unemployment.

This is the second time Afrobarometer has conducted such a survey in Ghana; the first was in 1999 and the findings in the second report had already been discussed with government and the donor community. The third group, with which the CDD discussed Afrobarometer 2, was a section of the media.

The finalisation of the report and a full-scale release of the survey report, is expected soon, according to the executive director of the CDD.