President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) could face “the public’s punishment” in the seven-in-one elections at the end of next year, as more than 60 percent of respondents in an opinion poll released yesterday said they intended to “punish Ma with their ballots.”
In a survey conducted by Taiwan Thinktank, 62.6 percent of respondents said they would use the elections to voice their opposition to the president’s poor performance.
Only 26.5 percent of those polled disagreed with the idea, while 10.9 percent declined to comment.
Meanwhile, a majority of the respondents expressed concerns about the cross-strait service trade agreement, with 85.5 percent saying that they knew nothing about the pact and 61.6 percent worrying about the potential impact to the local service sector.
A total of 70.9 percent of the respondents said they worried that their jobs would be affected by the agreement and 68.9 percent said the pact placed the interests of large corporations above those of smaller businesses, the survey showed.
Forty-four percent to 32 percent said that the trade agreements Ma signed with Beijing since taking office have had more negative impacts than positive ones.
The perceived failure of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) “could be why people were unsure of the service trade agreement without knowing much about it,” former National Taiwan University professor Chen Po-chih (陳博志) said.
The poll also found that 78.9 percent of respondents did not believe the government’s pledge that 80 percent of small businesses owners would not be affected by the scheduled electricity rate hike next month.
A price increase before a comprehensive reform of the state-owned Taiwan Power Co (台電) was unreasonable, 76 percent of the respondents said, with only 15.2 percent viewing the price rise acceptable.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
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