A little more than 52 percent of the public is unhappy with the Executive Yuan’s efforts to boost employment, while 52.9 percent are dissatisfied with its efforts to boost economic development, a survey by the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission (RDEC) shows.
The survey, conducted on March 26 and March 27, interviewed 1,241 people above the age of 20 through random selection of residential telephones. In all, 1,073 agreed to answer the survey, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.
The survey showed that 43.8 percent of respondents were dissatisfied with the amount of increase in social welfare provision and 48.4 were unhappy with the education system.
Photo: Hung Jui-chin, Taipei Times
While 48 percent professed confidence in the government’s policy implementation for the next year, 40 percent said they were not confident.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) said that while President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had won re-election on an economic platform, post-election surveys by the government showed that more than 50 percent of the public were dissatisfied with the government’s performance on economic development.
There were also higher figures of discontent with regard to other policies, which shows that Taiwanese are very unhappy with the government, Tsai said, adding that the public had lost all trust in the Ma administration.
Ma should reform his Cabinet, halt policies such as electricity and gas price increases, and apologize to the nation, Tsai said.
Tsai also claimed that the commission survey had tried to avoid the issue of public trust in the Cabinet by changing the title of its survey.
Past surveys by the commission had been titled “The People’s Satisfaction with Governmental Policy Implementation” and included questions on satisfaction with the Cabinet’s performance and administrative efficiency, Tsai said.
The change in title to “Satisfaction of the Executive Yuan’s Policy Implementation” stems from the government’s anticipation of negative feedback and represents an attempt to avoid the issue of the Cabinet’s approval rate and presidential performance by omitting those questions, Tsai said.
DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) also alleged that questions on satisfaction with government performance on cross-strait relations, performance on cross-strait diplomacy and performance on taxation reform were purposefully left out.
“Why are there no questions concerning cross-strait diplomacy, when in past policy implementation surveys there were?” Chen asked.
The Ma administration must have known that the controversial “One country, two areas (一國兩區)” rhetoric voiced late last month would not be accepted by the majority of the public, Chen said, adding that the Ma administration did not include questions concerning cross-strait issues, because of fears that such questions would lower the government’s overall score on policy implementation.
Commission spokesperson Sung Yu-hsieh (宋餘俠) said the survey focused on the implementation of Cabinet policy, which was why issues of diplomacy and cross-strait matters, which pertain to presidential powers, were not included.
On the issue of tax reform, Sung said the lack of questions on the subject reflected the Ministry of Finance’s uncertainty over its capital-gains tax policy at the time the survey was conducted.
As for the lack of questions on satisfaction with the Cabinet and the president, Sung said the commission felt responses to the questions pertaining to presidential satisfaction were easily swayed by the fame of a person or the respondents’ personal feelings.
“We concentrated on questions that would be of genuine help to government policy implementation and left out those that touched on satisfaction with specific individuals,” Sung said.
Translated by Jake Chung, staff writer
CLASH OF WORDS: While China’s foreign minister insisted the US play a constructive role with China, Rubio stressed Washington’s commitment to its allies in the region The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday affirmed and welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio statements expressing the US’ “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan” and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart. The ministry in a news release yesterday also said that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated many fallacies about Taiwan in the call. “We solemnly emphasize again that our country and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, and it has been an objective fact for a long time, as well as
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
‘VERY SHALLOW’: The center of Saturday’s quake in Tainan’s Dongshan District hit at a depth of 7.7km, while yesterday’s in Nansai was at a depth of 8.1km, the CWA said Two magnitude 5.7 earthquakes that struck on Saturday night and yesterday morning were aftershocks triggered by a magnitude 6.4 quake on Tuesday last week, a seismologist said, adding that the epicenters of the aftershocks are moving westward. Saturday and yesterday’s earthquakes occurred as people were preparing for the Lunar New Year holiday this week. As of 10am yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) recorded 110 aftershocks from last week’s main earthquake, including six magnitude 5 to 6 quakes and 32 magnitude 4 to 5 tremors. Seventy-one of the earthquakes were smaller than magnitude 4. Thirty-one of the aftershocks were felt nationwide, while 79
RSS