Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner ranks as the French government's top "blunderer" while Finance Minister Christine Lagarde is simply the best, according to a rating by the ministers released Thursday.
Nearly all of President Nicolas Sarkozy's 37 cabinet ministers agreed to answer a questionnaire by the weekly L'Express to assess their colleagues' performance.
Lagarde, who was the first woman to become minister for finance and economy in a Group of Eight country, was rated the best by 18 of the ministers followed far behind by Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo, who won four votes.
Kouchner on the other hand won the dubious distinction of top "blunderer" in the government after he referred to China's Uighur minority as "yoghurts" -- the two words "ouighur" and "yaourt" -- are phonetically close in French.
London's Financial Times last month declared Lagarde the best finance minister in Europe for her dynamic push for regulation after last year's meltdown.
"My colleagues are very indulgent and I am flattered," Lagarde was quoted as telling L'Express.
"Maybe some of them are thinking in the back of their minds that I have no ambition and that if I had any, this praise would play against me."
The 33 ministers who answered the survey also rated Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot as the "funniest" of the lot for a crude comment in parliament and her entertaining jokes about blondes on the president's plane.
Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire ranked as the third best minister after Lagarde and Borloo. Prime Minister Francois Fillon was excluded from the exercise because the "chief by definition cannot be ranked", L'Express wrote.
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