President Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) approval rating stood at 46.8 percent in the latest opinion poll released by the Cabinet's Research, Development and Evaluation Commission over the weekend.
The results of the telephone poll released on Sunday showed that 43.8 percent of respondents were dissatisfied with his performance since he took office in May 2008.
The poll also found that respondents were satisfied with the Ma administration's efforts to improve relations across the Taiwan Strait, giving him an approval rating of 68.3 percent for his efforts in that regard.
The poll showed that 55.3 percent of respondents still supported Ma, while 32.1 percent said they did not support him.
Meanwhile, 50.2 percent said they were satisfied with Premier Wu Den-yih's (吳敦義) performance, while 31.7 percent gave him the thumbs-down.
The poll, conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, also found that 47.9 percent of respondents were satisfied with the Cabinet’s performance, compared with 37.4 percent who said they were not satisfied.
On specific aspects of government, the Ma administration's respect for democracy and rule of law gained an approval rating of 55.1 percent; its efforts to boost the economy, 54.3 percent; and its political integrity, 51 percent.
The government's performance in environmental protection and ecological conservation was given a 46.2 percent approval rating; its fiscal management, 45.4 percent; and its work in educational and cultural development, 45 percent.
The respondents were divided over the question of whether the administrative team is efficient, with 42.7 percent giving a thumbs-down, while 41.3 percent gave a positive rating.
Overall, 49.9 percent said they were confident that the government would perform better in the coming year, while 40.1 percent said they did not believe there would be any improvement.
The opinion poll had a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of 2.98 percent.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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