The looming Cabinet reshuffle has helped boost President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) odds of winning re-election in 2012, the Center for Prediction Market at National Chengchi University said yesterday.
The center said the likelihood of Ma winning the next presidential election rose to 63.2 percent, an increase of 11.4 percentage points from its Aug. 20 forecast, which was the lowest point since the center began tracking the issue in April.
The likelihood of Ma winning in 2012 in a two-way race dropped after Typhoon Morakot lashed the nation from Aug. 8, the center said, adding that it began to rise again after Aug. 21, when the government’s resettlement and reconstruction project began to show some results.
Although the presidential election is three years away, traders look into other variables when they made the bids, including Ma’s possible future rivals, the Democratic Progressive Party’s condition, the economic situation and cross-strait relations, center director Tung Chen-yuan (童振源) said.
Prediction markets are markets where payoffs are tied to unknown future events. The center makes predictions on a variety of issues, including politics, the economy, international affairs, sports and entertainment.
Tung said the odds of Ma winning re-election never dropped below 50 percent, indicating that although many people are unhappy with him, he is still the favored candidate.
The more vibrant the trading, the more accurate the prediction, Tung said, adding that the re-election issue had attracted 665,000 trading entries as of Tuesday.
The Presidential Office announced on Monday that Ma had appointed Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman and Secretary-General Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) to be the next premier, shortly after Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) announced he was stepping down, effective today, and that the rest of the Cabinet would resign as well.
Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) dismissed a report in the Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday that Liu had resigned because he was at odds with Ma over the scale of a Cabinet reshuffle.
The newspaper said while Liu preferred to reorganize part of the government, Ma accepted the KMT’s suggestion that a “large-scale” change would be better.
Wang said Ma and Liu had reached an agreement in the middle of last month that Liu would shoulder political responsibility for the typhoon’s aftermath early this month. They had not revealed their plan to avoid damaging the morale of Cabinet officials who were preoccupied with relief efforts, he said.
The United Daily News report also said that Ma had demanded that his former aide, Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp chief executive officer Ou Chin-der (歐晉德), replace Vice Premier Paul Chiu (邱正雄).
Wang said the idea of pairing Liu and Ou had never been raised and that Ma and Liu were good friends and colleagues. Ma and Liu had agreed on the announcement of the new premier and vice premier shortly after Liu announced his resignation, Wang said.
Ma asked Wu to be the next premier last Friday and asked KMT Vice Chairman and Taoyuan County Commissioner Eric Chu (朱立倫) to be vice premier on Saturday, Wang said. Ma then visited Liu at his home on Sunday to thank him for his efforts, he said.
Wang declined to confirm whether Ma had other candidates in mind for the two top spots, saying if he did, it was meaningless now.
The Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported that KMT Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) had been touted as a candidate for premier, but “Ma’s clan” was against the idea because they feared it would limit Ma’s power.
Meanwhile, Wang confirmed Ma had asked Minister of the Interior Liao Liou-yi (廖了以) if he was interested in the post of Presidential Office secretary-general because incumbent Chan Chun-po (詹春柏) will succeed Wu Den-yih as KMT secretary-general.
National Security Council Secretary-General Su Chi (蘇起) will keep his job despite calls for his resignation, Wang said, and Presidential Office Deputy Secretary-General Kao Lang (高朗) will also stay on.
Taiwan aims to open 18 representative offices and seven Taiwan Tourism Information Centers worldwide by next year to attract international visitors, the Tourism Administration said on Saturday. The agency has so far opened three representative offices abroad this year and would open two more before the end of the year, it said. It has also already opened information centers in Jakarta, Mumbai and Paris, and is to open one in Vancouver next month and in Manila in December, it said. Next year, it would also open offices in Amsterdam, Dubai and Sydney, it added. While the Cabinet did not mention international tourists in its
NEXT LEVEL: The defense ministry confirmed that a video released last month featured personnel piloting new FPV drone systems being developed by the Armaments Bureau Taipei and Washington are pushing for their drone companies to work together to establish a China-free supply chain, the Financial Times reported on Friday. A delegation of high-level executives and US government officials were yesterday to arrive in Taipei to discuss with their Taiwanese counterparts collaboration on drone technology procurement and development, the report said. The executives represent 26 US manufacturers of drone and counter-drone systems, while the officials are from the US Department of Commerce and the US Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit, along with Dev Shenoy, principal director for microelectronics in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense
SECURITY: The New Zealand and Australian navies also sailed military vessels through the Strait yesterday to assert the right of freedom of navigation The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force on Wednesday made its first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait in response to the intrusion by a Chinese reconnaissance aircraft into Japan’s sovereign airspace last month, Yomiuri Shimbun reported yesterday. The Japanese news platform reported that the destroyer JS Sazanamisailed down through the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday, citing sources in the Japanese government with knowledge of the matter. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi declined to comment on the reports at a regular briefing because they concern military operations. Military vessels from New Zealand and Australia also sailed through the Strait on the same day, Wellington’s defense ministry
SOVEREIGNTY EMPHASIZED: President William Lai said that Taiwan ‘absolutely will not sign’ an agreement with Beijing implying that the nation is part of China Taiwan hopes to join like-minded nations under the democratic umbrella and jointly counter authoritarian aggression, President William Lai (賴清德) said in a prerecorded speech during the annual Concordia Summit in New York on Tuesday. Lai addressed the summit via video at Concordia’s invitation, using the opportunity to speak on the issue of Chinese aggression toward Taiwan and Beijing’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758. Lai’s comments came on the heels of the 79th session of the UN General Assembly, which opened on Tuesday. China has “distorted” UN Resolution 2758 “in support of its ‘one China’ principle,” he said. Through its misinterpretation