President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) latest approval rating was its lowest in nearly three years at 18.7 percent and he would not have won his re-election bid if the presidential election were held today, according to a public opinion poll released yesterday.
Ma’s approval rating was the lowest since August 2009, when he received a 16 percent approval rating after mishandling relief work after Typhoon Morakot, which killed hundreds of people, Taiwan Brain Trust (TBT) chief executive officer Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) told a press conference yesterday.
Ma saw his approval rating fall by 7.4 percentage points in less than a month after registering 26.1 percent in the TBT’s previous survey, released on March 19.
Photo: CNA
“It seems to us that Ma did not have the ‘honeymoon period’ that newly elected presidents usually enjoy because of his failures on many fronts,” Lo said.
The latest poll conducted by the think tank, which is generally perceived to be more sympathetic to the pan-green camp, also found that 13.4 percent of those who voted for Ma, who was re-elected in January with 51.6 percent of the vote, would switch their support to former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and make Tsai the winner with a 40.6 percent vote share over Ma’s 22.1 percent if the election were held today.
Ma’s approval ratings have plummeted even before his inauguration for his second term on May 20 because of his poor performance and failure to deal with cross-strait issues, rising commodity prices and to safeguard food safety in recent months, analysts said.
On cross-strait issues, 54.1 percent of respondents said they opposed the Ma administration’s “one country, two areas” proposal, with 61 percent saying that Ma should withdraw the initiative and 66.3 percent saying they disagreed with the notion that “both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one China.”
Respondents also showed a great degree of displeasure with the recent fuel, electricity and commodities price increases, with 91.2 percent saying that the increases had affected their livelihood and 85.3 percent unhappy with the Ma administration’s handling of commodity prices.
Among the respondents, 61.6 percent said Ma’s decision to raise fuel and electricity prices has been “an act of cheating to win votes.”
Ma appears to be banking all his “presidential legacy” on cross-strait relations, knowing that there is little he can do in other areas, DPP Legislator Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) and Soochow University professor Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said.
“We should stay alert as to whether Ma makes an even bolder statement on cross-strait relations in his inauguration speech — his last roll of the dice,” Lin said.
“Hopefully, the result of this poll will serve as a reminder for Ma against making dramatic moves on cross-strait relations, because his past initiatives — the proposed signing of a peace agreement and the ‘one country, two areas’ proposal — both failed to win people’s support,” Lin added.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet led by Premier Sean Chen (陳冲) has also failed to impress people, with 78.7 percent of respondents saying they were not satisfied with its performance.
The survey polled 1,079 people on April 5 and April 6 and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS