President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) credibility has hit a new low with more than 60 percent of respondents in a public opinion survey released yesterday saying he is an “over-packaged product.”
The public’s view of Ma’s integrity has dipped further with negative responses about his image increasing by up to 8.5 percentage points on the same survey conducted by Taiwan Indicator Survey Research last year.
Ma’s latest 20.1 percent credibility rating was only slightly better than former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) at his worst mark of 17.7 percent, when Chen was embroiled in the 2006 corruption scandal. This is despite Ma and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enjoying a strong legislative majority and control of the executive branch.
In the poll, 62.9 percent of the respondents found Ma untrustworthy and 74.1 percent disapproved of his performance.
In a series of questions about Ma’s “brand image,” 63.9 percent of respondents said he was “over-packaged,” 58.8 percent said his abilities were “exaggerated” and 47 percent saw him as “an expired, deteriorating product.”
Numbers to the same questions in May last year increased by between 3.3 and 8.5 percentage points, showing that “Ma has become more unpopular,” a TISR press release showed.
With Ma being the only candidate in the KMT chairmanship election next week, 59.6 percent of respondents said his insistence on doubling as the president and KMT chairman was inappropriate, while 20.8 percent said it was appropriate and 19.6 percent declined to answer.
KMT supporters appeared to be struggling with Ma’s decision, TISR said, as a further breakdown found that 43.5 percent of the KMT supporters deemed it appropriate and 40.1 percent said otherwise.
However, the survey found that more than half of KMT supporters still opted to support Ma in the chairman election, with 53 percent saying that they would vote for him “to show KMT solidarity” and 33.2 percent saying that they preferred to cast invalid ballots “to warn Ma and give him a lesson.”
Asked whether his doubling as KMT chairman would help him fight corruption and rebuild the party’s image, 72.4 percent of those polled gave negative answers, while 12.6 percent was positive and 15.1 percent did not answer.
The poll, conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday, collected 1,005 valid samples and had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
SECURITY CONCERNS: The Telecom Technology Center ran black-box tests for the Executive Yuan on devices and software from Chinese, US and South Korean firms Network devices from several Chinese manufacturers are insecure and allow personal information to be leaked, testing commissioned by the Executive Yuan has shown. A variety of devices and software, including apps, from Chinese, US and South Korean manufacturers that are used by government agencies at the central and local level were subjected to black-box testing — in which the functionality of an application is examined without knowing about its internal structure, an information-security official said yesterday on condition of anonymity. The Telecom Technology Center conducted the tests, which simulated cyberattacks, to determine their resilience to the attacks, the official said. The center
Americans awoke yesterday to charred and glass-strewn streets in dozens of cities after another night of unrest fueled by rage over the mistreatment of African Americans at the hands of police, who responded to the violence with tear gas and rubber bullets. Tens of thousands marched peacefully through streets to protest the death of George Floyd, a black man who died on Monday last week after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on his neck until he stopped breathing. However, many demonstrations sank into chaos as night fell: Vehicles and businesses were torched. The words “I can’t breathe” were
The nation marked its 49th day with no new domestic COVID-19 cases yesterday, and there were no new imported cases, but that does not mean the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) can relax its attention, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said yesterday in Tainan as he and a team of health officials wrapped up a weekend visit to the city. The visit is part of the center’s efforts to promote domestic travel under the “new disease prevention lifestyle.” Among the 442 confirmed cases, 423 have been released from isolation and 12 people remain hospitalized, Chen
EXTRA INVITATIONS: Russia, Australia, South Korea and India would be asked to a later summit dedicated to countering China, Donald Trump said US President Donald Trump has been forced to cancel a planned face-to-face summit of G7 leaders this month and now wants to host an expanded meeting in September dedicated to countering China to which Russian President Vladimir Putin would be invited. Trump on Saturday announced that he had canceled the June meeting, which he had billed as a symbol of the US “transitioning back to greatness,” after German Chancellor Angela Merkel told him in a telephone call that she saw the summit in Washington as a health risk. Hundreds of security staff, journalists and officials also attend the two-day summits. Reports suggest
RSS