Two recent opinion polls, one published by the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation on Tuesday last week and the other by the green-friendly Taiwan Thinktank on Saturday, show a worrisome trend: Support for President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is declining.
Although Tsai’s approval rating remains relatively high at 56 percent, the foundation’s survey found a 14 percentage point drop from May, when the nation’s first woman head of state was sworn in amid high hopes and public excitement.
Contrarily, the percentage of respondents who are dissatisfied with Tsai’s handling of national matters since her inauguration, including major government policies and personnel arrangements, rose 12 percentage points from May to 21.1 percent.
The Taiwan Thinktank poll had similar results. While Tsai’s approval rating declined by 3 percentage points, her disapproval rating increased significantly, by about 24 percentage points, to 36 percent.
However, a further breakdown of the survey numbers show that Tsai’s approval rating is actually on the rise among Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) supporters, from 77.2 percent in early June to 83.3 percent. On the other hand, the percentage of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supporters who are satisfied with her performance has plummeted from 31.9 percent to 8.2 percent.
Some political analysts interpret the decline in Tsai’s approval rating as a “correction” of a “ratings bubble,” which they believe could have been inflated due to electoral fever.
Others are of the opinion that it is largely due to Tsai’s failures in handling cross-strait ties, crushing pan-blue voters’ hopes that the president would further relations between Taipei and Beijing on the basis of the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution.
These reasons might have played a decisive part in loss of approval, but another often-overlooked reason for the downward ratings trend could be Taiwanese voters’ tendency to make spur-of-the-moment judgments and to hold unreasonable expectations that the government should produce quick results.
For instance, pushing for pension reforms is one of Tsai’s main campaign pledges. She fleshed out the promise in her May 20 inaugural address by announcing a plan to establish a national pension reform committee headed by Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) and include extensive public participation.
Less than two weeks after taking office, Tsai delivered on her promise by establishing the committee, which convened its seventh weekly meeting yesterday. While some have lauded Tsai for swift and efficient action, others have criticized the committee meetings as being vague and unproductive.
Pension reform is an extremely thorny and complicated issue because it is closely intertwined with the core interests and financial security of individuals from different social sectors and occupations. It requires thorough discussions and consensuses. Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration tried and failed at this task.
Given that Tsai is only two-and-a-half months into her presidency, this line of criticism demonstrates just how impatient and unwilling voters are to give those in power time to properly tackle major social problems. They should remember that “haste makes waste” and the countless spur-of the-moment programs that previous governments launched, only to end dismally.
As the leader of a government determined to be steered by public opinion, Tsai is likely to let the declining approval ratings affect her policy direction. She should fight that tendency. Appeasing voters is not what makes a great leader, decisiveness is.
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