Having won nearly 57 percent of the popular vote in the Jan. 16 presidential election, expectations were high when President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was sworn into office in May.
However, just six months later, opinion polls show her approval rating has plummeted dramatically.
In a poll released by Taiwan Indicators Survey Research late last month, her approval rating stood at 34.9 percent, down by 2.7 percentage points from the previous survey, with 48.4 percent of respondents expressing dissatisfaction with her leadership, an increase of 2 percentage points from the previous poll.
A poll published by the Taiwan Thinktank on Nov. 11 showed her approval rating fell below her disapproval rating for the first time since her inauguration, with her approval rating at 40.6 percent, while her disapproval rating was 42.8 percent.
A poll published by the Chinese-language Apple Daily on Saturday last week showed that 58 percent of respondents were dissatisfied with Tsai’s performance, compared with 34 percent who said they are satisfied. That poll found that 59 percent of resondents were not satisfied with Premier Lin Chuan’s (林全) performance, compared with 31 percent who said they were.
Granted, polls by and large are mostly for reference only, but that different surveys conducted by separate outlets all show weakening support for Tsai is a clear indication of the public’s grievances with her administration.
Why the slip? The answer is simple: the public’s disappointment.
“I would like to tell you that, regarding the results of the Jan. 16 elections, I have always had one interpretation only. The public elected a new president and new government with one single expectation: solving problems,” Tsai said in her May 20 inauguration address.
However, rather than solving problems, what the public has instead witnessed is the administration creating problems by stirring up controversies with almost every one of its policies.
From pension reform, the proposed five-day workweek with “one fixed day off and one flexible rest day,” to a plan to lift the ban on food products imported from five Japanese prefectures affected by the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster, just to name a few, not a single policy proposal reflects the sort of “most communicable government” that the president pledged.
Nobody says governing and implementing reforms is easy, but it seems that Tsai has forgotten her solemn pledge that her administration would pay close attention to the public’s concerns.
Tsai’s administration is clearly risking its credibility with a slew of vacillating policies — let alone broken promises — on issues such as implementing judicial reform and the snails pace of investigations into Mega International Commercial Bank and XPEC Entertainment cases.
Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) insightfully pointed out in his recent interview with Japan’s Sankei Shimbun that Tsai’s administration “lacks courage and decisiveness,” adding that its problems with its attempts at judicial, pension and labor reforms are due to a lack of these qualities.
Hopefully the results of recent polls and Lee’s words will serve as sufficient warning, reminding Tsai and the Cabinet that the government as a whole must stop drawing the ire of the public with what appear to be arbitrary and capricious actions.
From the Iran war and nuclear weapons to tariffs and artificial intelligence, the agenda for this week’s Beijing summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is packed. Xi would almost certainly bring up Taiwan, if only to demonstrate his inflexibility on the matter. However, no one needs to meet with Xi face-to-face to understand his stance. A visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing — in particular, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, which chronicles the rise and rule of the Chinese Communist Party — might be even more revealing. Xi took the members
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Friday used their legislative majority to push their version of a special defense budget bill to fund the purchase of US military equipment, with the combined spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.78 billion). The bill, which fell short of the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion request, was passed by a 59-0 margin with 48 abstentions in the 113-seat legislature. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), who reportedly met with TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) for a private meeting before holding a joint post-vote news conference, was said to have mobilized her
The inter-Korean relationship, long defined by national division, offers the clearest mirror within East Asia for cross-strait relations. Yet even there, reunification language is breaking down. The South Korean government disclosed on Wednesday last week that North Korea’s constitutional revision in March had deleted references to reunification and added a territorial clause defining its border with South Korea. South Korea is also seriously debating whether national reunification with North Korea is still necessary. On April 27, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung marked the eighth anniversary of the Panmunjom Declaration, the 2018 inter-Korean agreement in which the two Koreas pledged to
I wrote this before US President Donald Trump embarked on his uneventful state visit to China on Thursday. So, I shall confine my observations to the joint US-Philippine military exercise of April 20 through May 8, known collectively as “Balikatan 2026.” This year’s Balikatan was notable for its “firsts.” First, it was conducted primarily with Taiwan in mind, not the Philippines or even the South China Sea. It also showed that in the Pacific, America’s alliance network is still robust. Allies are enthusiastic about America’s renewed leadership in the region. Nine decades ago, in 1936, America had neither military strength
RSS