Mon, Feb 13, 2006 page1

• Poll backs Chen on guidelines gambit

  VOX POPULI China may fume and the US may shudder, but an independent poll has found that most Taiwanese support the president's probe into unification mechanisms

  • By Shih Hsiu-chuan / STAFF REPORTER
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  A poll conducted by a private think tank showed that more than two-thirds of Taiwanese support discussing the necessity of the National Unification Guidelines.

  The Institute for National Policy Research, an independent research organization, yesterday released the public opinion survey on the guidelines, which regard unification with China as an ultimate goal.

  The issue has led to tensions between Taiwan and the US after President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) floated abolishing the guidelines as well as the National Unification Council.

  While Chen's proposal to scrap the guidelines and the dormant council has alarmed Washington over a possible change to the cross-strait "status quo," the survey showed that Chen's proposal to assess their necessity has the support of most Taiwanese.

  The survey said that 67.5 percent of respondents agreed that the existence of the guidelines was in need of discussion, while 10.6 percent disagreed.

  On the guidelines' ultimate goal of unification, 24.2 percent of respondents said they were in favor of proceeding with this course of action, while 51.3 percent said they were not.

  In addition, 78 percent said they agreed with the contention that Taiwan's future should be decided by Taiwanese people, while 7 percent disagreed.

  "The result showed that as time has gone on, most people haven't been treating the guidelines as an inviolable doctrine. They are a legacy of the former authoritarian regime and do not fit in with democratic values," Mainland Affairs Council Vice Chairman David Huang (黃偉峰) said.

  Huang said that having the power to decide the nation's future had become mainstream public opinion, and that the guidelines could not meet public expectations.

  Despite a majority of respondents backing a review of the guidelines, the survey also showed they took seriously the reactions of China and the US.

  Forty-four percent said they cared about China's reaction if the government dismantles the council and guidelines, while 39.8 percent said they did not.

  But a slightly higher 47.8 percent of respondents said they care about the reaction of other countries, especially the US, while 37.8 percent didn't.

  Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明), an assistant research fellow in political science at Academia Sinica, said the survey's questions drew out the fact that most Taiwanese look at cross-strait issues pragmatically.

  "The institute should have also asked people who support the president in abolishing the guidelines if they would change their mind after taking external factors such as American and Chinese opposition into consideration," Hsu said.

  Hsu said that the amount of support for Chen's position was noteworthy given the higher representation of pan-blue support in the sample.

  He was referring to the fact that 12.7 percent of the respondents identified themselves as pan-green supporters, while 28.6 percent said they were supporters of the pan-blue camp; the remainder said they had no particular political inclination.

  Chen Ming-tong (陳明通), a political science professor at National Taiwan University, said the survey demonstrated that the value of democracy had become deeply rooted in most Taiwanese people regardless of political affiliation.

  "The guidelines, which set unification as the only goal, were unacceptable to most Taiwanese because they are contradictory to the democratic values most people uphold," he said.

  The survey was conducted from Feb. 8 to Feb. 10 by telephone interview with adults aged between 20 and 69. There were 1,067 valid responses.
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