President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his administration received 46.5 points out of a possible 100 for their performance during Ma’s five years in office, a public opinion poll released yesterday showed.
The poll, conducted by Taiwan Indicator Survey Research (TISR), comes a week before the anniversary of Ma’s first-term inauguration in 2008.
The results showed that Ma scored the lowest compared with five similar polls since December 2008 — in which he received scores ranging between 50.7 and 57.9 points. He has never achieved a passing grade of 60 points.
Photo: Lin Yi-chang, Taipei Times
Respondents who identified themselves as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supporters gave Ma an average score of 60.7 points, but the score dipped to 35.2 points among pan-green supporters and 43.6 points among independent respondents, the survey showed.
The president’s credibility and approval rating remained in the basement, with 17.9 percent of respondents saying they approved of his performance, while 69.6 percent said they were not satisfied with it.
Almost six in 10 respondents, or 57 percent, found Ma untrustworthy, while 25.7 percent said Ma was credible.
Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), who became Ma’s fourth premier in February, did not fare well either, with an approval rating of 20.7 percent.
TISR said in a press release that Jiang’s disapproval rating of 44.2 percent was 18.9 percentage points higher than that of February, which appeared to be because of his unpopular policies.
As for Cabinet members, most of whom assumed their duties in February, Minister of the Interior Lee Hong-yuan (李鴻源), Minister of Culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) and Department of Health Minister Chiu Wen-ta (邱文達) were the only ones to receive higher approval ratings than disapproval ratings.
However, respondents appeared unfamiliar with the make-up of the Cabinet. Between 41 percent and 77 percent of respondents did not know about a specific Cabinet member.
Council for Labor Affairs Minister Pan Shih-wei (潘世偉) had the poorest rating among all officials named in the poll, with a disapproval rating of 43.3 percent and a 6.7 percent approval rating.
The poll, conducted between Wednesday and Thursday last week, collected 1,001 valid samples and had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
COSTLY TECH FAILURE: More than 25,000 files for nearly 8,000 students from 81 schools were lost when system administrators updated a server, the Ministry of Education said The academic records of 7,854 high-school students have been lost due to a hard-drive failure, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The records were being stored at National Chi Nan University, which was commissioned by the ministry’s K-12 Education Administration to host a computer server of student portfolios that universities could access to evaluate their applications. Under a program introduced in 2019 for high-school students starting that year, students are to create portfolios to be used for university applications, which include their grades, extracurricular activities and other information related to their character and achievements. System administrators discovered that files were missing when rebooting
921 EARTHQUAKE: The magnitude 7.3 quake left 2,456 people dead and 10,718 injured, while 53,661 houses were fully destroyed and 53,024 houses damaged The Central Weather Bureau yesterday received about 50,000 views on Facebook after it posted the data that it collected on Sept. 21, 1999, when the nation was devastated by a magnitude 7.3 earthquake. The data showed that the 921 Earthquake hit the nation at 1:47am, with the epicenter being 7km southwest of the bureau’s quake detection center in Nantou County’s Yuchi Township (魚池) at a depth of 8km. The quake left 2,456 people dead and 10,718 injured, while 53,661 houses were fully destroyed and 53,024 houses damaged, with the cost of the damage estimated at NT$300 billion (US$10.8 billion at the current
CONFUSING RESULTS: A New Taipei City worker tested positive for COVID-19 in a rapid test and a PCR test, but negative in a traditional nucleic acid test, the CECC said Travelers from Bangladesh, Brazil and Peru are no longer required to quarantine at a government center, and from Saturday can choose to quarantine at hotels, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The three nations are no longer considered “key high-risk countries,” as their COVID-19 case numbers have continued to fall, the CECC said, adding that no travelers from these countries have been confirmed to be infected with COVID-19 in the past two months. The revised classification would allow travelers from the three countries to choose where they stay during their mandatory 14-day quarantine, although they would be required to pay
‘TECHNICALITY’: The full moon was at 7:55am, but the Taipei Astronomical Museum said it technically remained a ‘real’ full moon when it rose again at night The Mid-Autumn Festival had a “real” full moon, the first time the astronomical categorization has fallen on the day of the festival since 2013, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said yesterday. The festival, which falls on the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar — which this year was yesterday — does not always coincide with an exact full moon, the museum said. A full moon occurs when the Earth is between the sun and the moon — or, more precisely, when the ecliptic longitudes of the sun and the moon differ by 180° — which has a cycle of
RSS