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.
The US Department of State yesterday criticized Beijing over its misrepresentation of the US’ “one China” policy in the latest diplomatic salvo between the two countries over a bid by Taiwan to regain its observer status at the World Health Assembly, the decisionmaking body of the WHO. “The PRC [People’s Republic of China] continues to publicly misrepresent U.S. policy,” Department of State spokesman Ned Price wrote on Twitter. “The United States does not subscribe to the PRC’s ‘one China principle’ — we remain committed to our longstanding, bipartisan one China policy, guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, Three Joint Communiques, and
FATES LINKED: The US president said that sanctions on Russia over Ukraine must exact a ‘long-term price,’ because otherwise ‘what signal does that send to China?’ US President Joe Biden yesterday vowed that US forces would defend Taiwan militarily in the event of a Chinese attack in his strongest statement to date on the issue. Beijing is already “flirting with danger,” Biden said following talks with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo, in which the pair agreed to monitor Chinese naval activity and joint Chinese-Russian exercises. Asked if Washington was willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan, he replied: “Yes.” “That’s the commitment we made,” Biden said. “We agreed with the ‘one China’ policy, we signed on to it ... but the idea that it can be
‘TOO RESTRICTIVE’: Ending US sales of weapons that do not fall under the category of ‘asymmetric’ would hamper Taiwan’s defense against China, two business groups said Taiwan’s weapons procurement decisions are made based on its needs, and are not influenced by individual arms dealers, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said yesterday after two US business groups questioned a US official’s comment on arms sales to Taiwan. US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Regional Security Mira Resnick told the business groups via video link on Saturday that Washington would adjust the types of weapons sold to Taiwan and end “most arms sales to Taiwan that do not fall under the category of ‘asymmetric.’” The American Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan and the US-Taiwan Business Council on Monday
Local COVID-19 cases are expected to continue rising in the upcoming week, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday, as it reported a record-high 85,310 new domestic cases and 41 deaths. Daily case numbers had remained in the 60,000s for the past six days before surging about 30 percent yesterday, said Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞), deputy head of the CECC’s medical response division, said the number of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests conducted on Tuesday also marked a record-high of 112,915, with a
RSS