NEW YORK, Jan 17: Two thirds of Pakistanis believe that the present leadership in Islamabad is taking the country in the wrong direction, the results of a Gallup poll released here on Friday said.

The Gallup Poll of Pakistan was conducted in October, before the latest crisis with India.

The survey revealed that President Asif Ali Zardari had failed, as of that point, to earn more support than his predecessor: his 19 per cent job approval rating was at par with the 17 per cent approval that Pakistanis gave former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf in June.

The survey revealed that when Gallup polled Pakistanis a month later, they were still mired in the country’s worst economic crisis in a decade and had just suffered one of the worst terrorist attacks on their own soil.

Fifteen per cent of the population hadn’t formulated an opinion about his leadership yet, but few approved of the job their new president was doing or expressed confidence in his abilities.

Only 13 per cent of Pakistanis said they were confident

Mr Zardari would be able to improve the lot of his people, while 62 per cent said they were not.

Outside the Sindh province, a support base for the ruling Pakistan People’s

Party and Mr Zardari’s birthplace, the new president has fewer admirers. While 39 per cent of Sindh residents approved of Mr Zardari’s leadership, his approval was 20 per cent in Balochistan, 12 per cent in Punjab, and just 7 per cent in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).

Twenty-nine per cent in Sindh said they were confident he can better Pakistanis’ lot, while 9 per cent in Balochistan, 8 per cent in Punjab and 2 per cent in the NWFP said this.

Wrong Direction

One challenge for Mr Zardari may be that a majority of Pakistanis still believe, as they did in June, that their country’s leadership is taking their nation in the wrong direction.

Two-thirds of residents said in October that the leadership of Pakistan was taking the country in the wrong direction, while just 10 per cent said it was leading it in the right direction.

While perhaps waxing nostalgic for better economic times under Musharraf, a sizable 28 per cent of Pakistanis reflected in October that Musharraf had led the country in the right direction.

However, the plurality of Pakistanis (45 per cent) said Musharraf led Pakistan in the wrong direction.