It's official. The ruling party is concerned about politics. So say the results of an opinion poll that was commissioned by the KMT legislative caucus and published yesterday.
"A KMT survey found that 86 percent of respondents agreed that the DPP government should shift its top priority in governing from political debates to issues that relate to people's livelihoods," KMT legislative whip Lee Chia-chin (李嘉進) said.
The survey of 1,061 people was conducted by telephone between Friday and Sunday last week. The margin of error was less than 3 percent, the KMT caucus said.
According to Lee, most of those interviewed felt that the DPP overemphasized political issues such as downsizing the legislature and holding referendums. More than half of them said the DPP focused only on winning next presidential election rather than improving the lives of people, Lee said.
Lee added that the respondents were quizzed on three issues on which the pan-blue camp is challenging the DPP administration: the unemployment rate, increases in health insurance premiums and high college tuition fees.
Lee said that 83 percent of those interviewed agreed with the KMT's view that unemploymen was too high, while 69 percent disagreed with the government's hike in health insurance premiums and 78 percent were unhappy with the level of education fees.
Lee also announced that 58 percent were aware of the KMT-PFP alliance's signature drive highlighting the three issues.
The KMT caucus said it had collected 800,000 signatures to protest against the DPP government's policies.
DPP legislative leader Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said he suspected that the KMT had asked questions in an order that could mislead respondents.
He said the KMT had failed to pass any priority bills in the past legislative session.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching