Eighty-six percent of respondents to a poll by the Chinese-language United Daily News said they believe the nation has been “stuck” for the past 11 years.
The poll, released yesterday, found that 86 percent of the respondents said they attribute the perceived national weakness to national policies becoming “stuck or stagnant,” and on average they believe the stagnation to have occurred 11 years ago.
Forty-one percent of the survey respondents said they felt the nation became “stuck” during President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, while 39 percent of respondents said they felt national stagnation to have occurred during former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration.
Twelve percent said they believed the stagnancy began under former presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) or Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石).
Among the self-reported supporters of the pan-blue camp, 43 percent said Taiwan’s stagnation began during Chen’s presidency, while 37 percent of pan-blue supporters said it began on Ma’s watch.
Forty-eight percent of self-reported pan-green voters said national stagnation began during Ma’s administration, while 38 percent said it started during Chen’s presidency.
In a multiple-choice section in the survey, respondents were asked to identify the causes that are responsible for impairing the performance of the nation.
Seventy-four percent identified partisanship and the political parties’ pursuit of selfish interests as the problem, while 43 percent blamed legislative inefficiency.
Only about 20 percent of respondents agreed that Taiwan’s problems are caused by the unwillingness of talented people to serve in the government, or that there is too much democracy in Taiwan, the poll said.
When asked about their hopes for president-elect Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) new government 64 percent of respondents said they believe Tsai should prioritize improving governmental efficiency, while 17 percent said that legislative reforms are urgent and 10 percent expressed a preference for constitutional reforms.
However, respondents predominantly said that they hoped the government could become more efficient without weakening the democratic process of negotiations and consensus-building, the poll showed.
Fifty-eight percent of the poll’s respondents said they prefer a government to respect democracy and engage consensus-building through negotiations, and 33 percent said they prefer a more centralized and efficient government.
Of constitutional reform proposals known to the public, the most popular was allowing absentee ballots for citizens to vote in areas other than the districts to which they were registered, with a support rating of 67 percent. The measure was opposed by 29 percent of respondents.
A majority of 58 percent of respondents said they are not in favor of a constitutional amendment lowering the voting age to 18 years, while 38 percent expressed support, the survey found.
Meanwhile, the survey showed respondents gave the nation’s overall performance a failing average grade of 56 out of 100 points on average.
The poll was conducted from Feb. 15 to Feb. 19. It had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, with 1019 valid samples, while 649 people refused to answer.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS