The majority of respondents in a poll, released yesterday said they did not believe that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) would be able to solve the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) deep-rooted problems and improve government performance as promised.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) spokeswoman Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) released the results of the poll, which was conducted by the DPP on Wednesday and Thursday.
The poll focused on several issues related to Ma’s taking over as KMT chairman today.
Results from the poll showed that 51.3 percent of the respondents did not believe Ma could improve government performance by concurrently serving as president and KMT chairman.
Before he was sworn in as president in May last year, Ma had promised on several occasions that he would not run for KMT chairman during his tenure as president.
Ma announced his bid for the party chairmanship earlier this year, however, saying that there had been no need to do so before he became president, but now he came to believe that heading the state and the party at the same time offered a way to improve government efficiency.
During his campaign for party chairman, Ma promised to reform some of the KMT’s deep-rooted problems, such as factions within the party, election bribery and corruption.
However, 52.8 percent of the respondents said they did not believe Ma would be able to wipe out corruption and campaign irregularities among party members.
More than 60 percent said that they didn’t think Ma would be able to stamp out conflicts between party factions, while 55.4 percent said they didn’t believe Ma would be able to resolve the party assets issue.
“It’s been years since Ma first said he was determined to resolve the party assets issue, but nothing has happened” despite Ma having served as KMT chairman once before, Hsiao said.
When asked if they thought it was appropriate for Ma to serve as the head of the state and of the party at the same time, 54.1 percent of the respondents said it was inappropriate.
A total of 813 valid samples were collected for the survey.
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