As clouds gather over British Prime Minister Tony Blair with feverish speculation on when he will hand over power, he joins a motley group of Western leaders whose terms in office are ending much less auspiciously than they started.
Like United States President George Bush, whom he followed into an ill-fated war in Iraq, Blair suffers from a perception that he has become a lame duck, even if — unlike the White House incumbent — he is unaffected by a legal limit on the number of years he can serve.
Like both President Jacques Chirac of France and Prime Minister Berlusconi of Italy, Blair is also seen as having been worn down by scandals and unpopular decisions.
When Tony Blair was catapulted into his current post in 1997 at age 43, the youngest person to become prime minister of Britain in almost two centuries, he seemed so fresh-faced and bouncy he quickly gained the nickname of ”Bambi”.
He went on to become the first Labour prime minister ever to win three successive elections, breaking what had seemed to be a jinx on the party after 18 years of Conservative rule, most of it under Margaret Thatcher.
In spite of a long list of legal and institutional reforms, Blair’s aura was to lose its shine on domestic issues, such as bringing private interests into education and health, but above all when he decided in 2002 to take Britain into the Iraq war.
This month sees him facing increased pressure to hand over to his powerful finance minister, Gordon Brown, amid a scandal over the handing-out of seats in Britain’s unelected upper house of Parliament.
Modern US presidents, unlike most European leaders, are constrained by the constitutional limit of two four-year terms.
However, Bush has achieved lame duck status unusually early in his second term, despite a far more convincing win in the 2004 poll than in his razor-thin first victory four years earlier.
Like Blair, Bush has been pulled down by the war in Iraq, but also by accusations of widespread incompetence in his administration, in particular after Hurricane Katrina last year, and by attempts to tinker with such bedrock domestic rights as state pensions and health care.
In the past month Bush has also found himself at odds with Congress, whose Republican members are now more worried about holding onto their seats in elections next November than about being associated with his policies.
He suffered a major setback when Congress refused to endorse a business deal that would have placed many of the country’s ports under the control of a company based in the United Arab Emirates.
Bush, who is 59, now faces almost three years as a president constrained by the ambitions of others.
Berlusconi and Chirac reflect the very different situations in their two countries, but both have been hard hit by scandals involving alleged influence-peddling and slush funds.
Chirac, who unlike the other three leaders, refused to take his country into the Iraq war, is widely seen as headed for the exit in elections due next year, and not only because of his age (73) and health.
In addition to the current crisis over a youth-jobs law, he has faced lawsuits relating to his time as mayor of Paris, and the failure of a European Union referendum which he had betted on winning.
Chirac is also widely perceived as having presided over squabbling between his political allies, and is notably at odds with Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, his conservative’s government’s ambitious number two and chief rival to Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.
Berlusconi (69) is facing an uncertain future beyond this weekend, when Parliamentary elections could bring in a leftist coalition.
Since he took office in May 2001 he has had to contend with a long series of financial-political scandals, which he has played down with his customary flair.
Last month he even compared himself to Jesus Christ — in a statement which handily deflected media attention from his opponents’ campaign.
Berlusconi, a billionaire communications magnate, says he wants ever closer ties with the US and rails at what he sees as over-regulation of big business by Brussels bureaucrats.
His centre-left opponents, led by former EU Commission president Romano Prodi, are nevertheless credited with the most support from Italy’s business community. — AFP
