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Poll shows general confidence in Ma's ability to deliver

While a great majority of the public is confident President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) will do well on cross-strait issues, opinion is more divided when it comes to his ability to keep politics out of education and the judiciary, a survey showed.

The poll was conducted by the Cabinet’s Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, Executive Yuan, to get a better sense of public reactions to Ma’s May 20 inaugural address.

In his address, Ma vowed to address the abuses that, in his view, had marred the nation’s democracy.

The survey, released on Friday, showed that 54.4 percent of respondents believed there would be no more illegal wiretapping, selective judicial investigation or political interference in media and electoral institutions under the Ma administration, while 22.7 percent did not think so.

More than 61 percent of respondents said they were confident Ma would “eradicate all forms of political interference in education,” as Ma had pledged in his address, while 20.7 percent said they were not.

Ma’s promise to demand that officials behave with integrity and efficiency in a clean political environment was received favorably by 61.1 percent, while 27.5 percent said they had doubts.

The survey showed that the public had higher confidence in how Ma would handle cross-strait affairs than in domestic reform.

Asked for their opinion on Ma’s pledge to maintain the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait under the principle of “no unification, no independence and no use of force,” 81.6 percent of respondents said they agreed, while 8.3 percent said they disagreed.

On a whether they supported Ma’s stance that the so-called “1992 consensus” should serve as the basis for the resumption of cross-strait talks, 74.6 percent agreed, while 11.7 percent disagreed.

The poll showed that 88.9 percent of respondents backed Ma’s contention that Taiwan and China should pursue reconciliation in the region and on the international stage, while 4.1 percent said they disagreed.

Eighty-two percent of respondents said Ma’s inaugural address demonstrated goodwill toward China, with 2.4 percent thinking otherwise.

The survey showed that 16.1 percent of respondents believed Ma had failed to defend the nation’s dignity in his inaugural address, while 64.3 percent disagreed.

The poll, conducted by telephone on May 22 and May 23, involved 1,087 respondents over the age of 20. Results have a 95 percent confidence index, with a standard deviation of 2.97.
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