A majority of people in Taiwan favor a round-table meeting between the major political parties to try to resolve the stand-off between the Executive and Legislative Yuans, according to a new poll released yesterday.
The poll found that 81 percent of respondents felt such a meeting would help, 71 percent supported President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) calling a round-table meeting and 76 percent felt that political parties should make conciliatory steps after the presidential election in order to help formulate policies.
The poll was conducted by the Eastern Multimedia Marketing Survey Center on behalf of the Public Administration Association of the ROC. The two groups held a press conference in Taipei yesterday to announce the results of the survey of 1088 people, which was conducted on Aug. 3 and Aug. 4. The poll has a 3 percent margin of error.
"The New Party is not opposed to the round-table meeting called by President Chen or the concept of reconciliation across parties that people support, but I am not optimistic about the outcome," said New Party Legislator Cheng Lung-shui (鄭龍水) at the press conference. He said he was not optimistic because so far the new government has only focused on fulfilling Chen's campaign promises instead of long-term national affairs policies.
Cheng added that reconciliation across parties is meaningless because political parties could reconcile ideologies and ethic background, but not political ideals. He said that political ideals could only be accomplished through democratic procedures in the legislature.
KMT Legislator Hung Chao-nan (
According to the poll results, public opinion is divided on the question of who should take the initiative in forming major national policies, with 39 percent of respondents saying the Executive Yuan, 24 percent saying the president and 22 percent saying both.
"It shows that the public has not reached any consensus between the presidential system or the Cabinet system," said Ron Fu-ten (戎輔天), manager of Eastern Multimedia Marketing Survey Center. "However, it seems that the public prefers the Cabinet system to the presidential system."
Chang Hsien-ya (
As for the breakdown in communication between the Legislative and Executive Yuans, 30 percent of respondents blamed the legislature, 28 percent said both were to blame and 12 percent blamed the Executive Yuan.
However, the poll indicates the popularity of the new government may be slipping, with 55 percent of respondents saying they were confident in the administration's handling of financial and economic matters and 31 percent saying they were pessimistic.
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