A majority of respondents in a public opinion poll released yesterday, said they had no confidence in President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) ability to promote “clean government” and were opposed to him serving concurrently as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman.The poll was conducted by Taiwan Indicate Survey Research (TISR) between Thursday and Friday.
Respondents expressed frustration over the recent corruption scandal involving former Executive Yuan secretary-general Lin Yi-shih (林益世), who has been detained by prosecutors.
In the survey, 63.4 percent of respondents said they had no confidence in Ma’s ability to crack down on corrupt officials and establish a clean government, while only 26.8 percent said he could.
Meanwhile, 63.2 percent of respondents said they did not believe Ma would be able to combat corruption and transform the KMT into a clean political party during his tenure as chairman. That figure represented an increase from 20.1 percent in August 2005 and 51.7 percent in October 2009.
More than half — 57.5 percent — of respondents said Ma should not double as party chairman.
However, respondents also expressed a lack of confidence in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), with 29.9 percent saying both the KMT and the DPP lacked self-introspection when it came to corruption cases involving high-ranking officials, while 26.5 percent favored the DPP and 21.3 preferred the KMT.
In addition, 50.1 percent of those polled said that Premier Sean Chen (陳冲), Lin’s immediate superior, should not resign as a result of the scandal, while 32.2 percent said Chen should take responsibility and resign.
The poll collected 1,001 samples and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
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