A public opinion poll was released yesterday, showing that scholars are dissatisfied with the government's economic and cross-strait relations policies.
The sampled scholars gave a score of 3.78 out of 10 on the performance of President Chen Shui-bian's (
A nongovernmental foundation commissioned National Chengchi University's (政治大學) Sun Yat-sen Graduate Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities (中山人文社會科學研究所) to conduct a survey from September to November last year, interviewing 30 Taiwan scholars whose area of specialization is politics, economics or sociology.
The poll was conducted using the Delphi polling procedure, a method rarely used in Taiwan, which conducts a series of interviews, instead of a single interview used in traditional polls. Scholars gave a zero for the least satisfactory item and a 10 for the most satisfactory one.
According to the poll, scholars gave an average of 4.97 for President Chen's leadership style. Chen got his lowest score for his ability to "communicate and listen to and adopt others' opinions."
As for domestic affairs, scholars feel least satisfied with the government's attitude toward victims of the 921 earthquake.
Regarding judicial achievements, they gave the highest score for cracking down on "black gold."
For cross-strait relations, scholars gave low scores to "the President's Advisory Group on Cross-strait Relations (
In respect to finance and the economy, scholars feel very dissatisfied with "the government's efforts to restore Taiwan's prosperity," "utilizing national forces to prop up the stock market," and "the decision-making process behind the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant (
As for the performances of government leaders, Minister of National Defense Wu Shih-wen (
The order for the others is as follows: head of the Environmental Protection Administration Hau Lung-bin (
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