Wed, Jun 11, 2008 page3

• Ma's rating drops: DPP polls

  HONEYMOON OVER? A DPP poll showed that President Ma Ying-jeou's approval rating was 71 percent on April 7, but that it had fallen to 51.8 percent as of last week

  • By Ko Shu-ling / STAFF REPORTER
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  President Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) approval rating has plummeted dramatically over the past two months, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday.

  Chen Chun-lin (陳俊麟), director of the DPP’s Public Opinion Survey Center, said that it was appalling to see a new president and a new government so unpopular during its “honeymoon” period, adding that he had hoped the situation would not be like this one month after the inauguration.

  “President Ma and Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) must take the matter seriously,” he said.

  A poll conducted by the center on last Thursday and Friday found that 50.8 percent of the people polled said they were satisfied with Ma’s performance since his inauguration on May 20, while nearly 43 percent said they were not happy with his performance.

  Ma’s popularity showed a significant drop over the past two months, the polls showed. His approval rating was over 71 percent in the center’s April 7 poll, but it fell to nearly 55 percent on May 27. While only 22.5 percent of the respondents said they were unhappy with Ma’s performance on April 7, the number climbed to over 32 percent on May 27.

  Chen said that he had never during his decades-long career as a pollster seen such a sharp decline in popularity for a president in such a short period of time.

  “Ma’s plummeting popularity figures show a 10 percent growth every 10 days. That’s 1.8 million people,” he said. “In other words, the number of people equivalent to the population of Yonghe City (永和) shift to finding Ma’s performance unsatisfactory each day.”

  The DPP poll also found that middle-of-the-road voters were even less impressed by Ma. In the April 7 poll, over 61 percent of such respondents said they were satisfied with Ma’s performance, but the figure plunged to 36 percent in the May 27 poll and 31 percent in the June 5 survey.

  Middle-of-the-road voters who were unhappy with Ma’s performance totaled 19 percent on April 7, but this figure climbed to 38 percent on May 27 and nearly 58 percent last week.

  Chen said he wondered whether the slide in Ma’s popularity had anything to do with his administration’s view toward sovereignty and the various gaffes committed by government officials.

  As the resumption of talks between Taiwanese and Chinese quasi-official agencies is set to begin today, the poll found that over 62 percent of the respondents said they did not think the new government was ready for further opening up to China.

  More than 68 percent of the people polled said sovereignty must not be compromised at the negotiation table, while only 23 percent said it could be.

  While the Ma administration tried to pin the country’s economic prosperity on further opening up to China, more than 62 percent of the people said they disagreed. Nearly 33 percent said they agreed and 5 percent refused to answer.

  Although about 79 percent of the respondents said China must withdraw the missiles targeted at Taiwan before both sides could sit down and talk, almost 68 percent said they did not think China would do so. Nearly 59 percent agreed that the withdrawal of missiles did not have much meaning because they were mobile.

  Meanwhile, Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) yesterday downplayed the poll results, saying that polls are just for reference and that they would correct any mistakes they made.

  In response to the polls, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Mainland Affairs Division director Chang Jung-kung (張榮恭) defended party chairman Wu Poh-hsiung’s (吳伯雄) trip to China, saying it had helped improve cross-strait relations.

  Chang dismissed the results of the DPP polls, which showed that more than 60 percent of the people thought that Wu belittled Taiwan’s sovereignty during his trip, arguing that Wu pushed for cross-strait exchanges by leaving disputes aside and focusing on seeking consensus with China during his trip.

  “The DPP government had been provoking China for the past eight years and damaged cross-strait relations. The KMT, however, helped improve cross-strait relations while insisting on maintaining Taiwan’s dignity,” Chang said.

  ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY MO YAN-CHIH
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