The urban approval rating of Colombia’s president Juan Manuel Santos has plummeted to a record low of 25% amid ongoing social dissatisfaction about his administration’s dealings with rural social unrest, said pollster Gallup on Wednesday.
The most recent approval rating is a record low for the president who in previous polls by Gallup never saw his rating drop beneath 50%.
Only 21% of polled urban dwellers said to have a positive image of their president, while a staggering 72% said to have a negative image of Santos.
The rejection of Santos’ policy was mostly visible in the approval rating of the government’s rural policies where the administration saw disapproval rise from 39% two months ago to 81% in the poll released Wednesday.
However, the disapproval of the administration’s policy increased across the board; 82% of the polled Colombians said the country was getting worse against 17% that said the country was getting better.
Seventy-one percent of urban Colombians said to disapprove of the government’s economic policies, 81% disapproved Santos’ handling of consumer prices and 75% rejected the president’s dealing with leftist guerrilla groups of which one, the FARC, is currently engaged in peace talks with the government.
Perception of insecurity and corruption also increased, said Gallup. According to the pollster, the disapproval rating of the Colombian government’s public security policy went from 73% to 84% while that of anti-corruption policies went from 76% to 80%.
The steep drop in approval of the government’s policy comes after weeks of social unrest over an ongoing crisis in Colombia’s countryside, amid ongoing peace talks with the FARC and pending peace talks with the ELN, and less than a year before presidential elections are held in Colombia.
Santos has yet to express his ambition to run for a second term, but has already announced he was seeking the reelection of his policies.