The public is becoming frustrated with the government two months after the inauguration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), a poll released by the Chinese-language United Evening News suggested yesterday.
The newspaper, which is sympathetic to the pan-blue camp, reported that the percentage of people unhappy with the performance of Ma and Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) had surpassed the percentage of those satisfied with the administration.
The survey, conducted on Thursday with 830 respondents aged 20 and older, found that 41 percent were dissatisfied with Ma and the premier, while 35 percent were satisfied.
In a survey conducted by the newspaper last month, 43 percent of respondents said they were satisfied with the administration, while 33 percent were not.
Thursday’s survey also found that 43 percent questioned Ma’s leadership of the administration, while 37 percent approved of his leadership.
When approached for comment, Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said yesterday that the president was open to public opinion.
“We will take a humble look at our [performance] and improve,” Wang said.
The United Evening News survey followed other polls in recent days that suggested Ma’s approval ratings have declined.
Cable station TVBS made a poll public on Thursday that ranked Ma as seventh among 10 prominent political figures in terms of public approval ratings — down from the top slot in a poll last August — while DPP Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) ranked first.
Separately, a recent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) poll found that disapproval ratings for Ma and Liu had climbed to 56 percent since Ma’s May 20 inauguration.
Commenting on the ratings, Tsai yesterday said that ups and downs in opinion polls were temporary and only to be expected.
The most important thing is for politicians to learn something from a drop in approval ratings, she said.
The public still have faith in the DPP, and the 5.44 million voters who voted for the DPP’s candidate in the March 22 presidential election remain firm supporters, she said.
Following a series of meetings recently with grassroots supporters and party officials, Tsai said she felt strongly that the DPP’s backers had not abandoned the party.
The party’s supporters want to see the party recover, she said.
A report in the Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday said that Tsai, in a letter to party staff, on Thursday encouraged all DPP personnel to “get back on their feet” in the face of challenging times.
“As long as we can get through this period, we will certainly stage a comeback,” Tsai was quoted as saying.
The DPP will regain its strength as a party willing to fight for its cause, she reportedly said.
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