President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) received 39.2 points out of a possible 100 for his performance as head of state this year, an opinion poll conducted by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) showed yesterday.
Ma’s administration also received poor grades, with Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) earning just 42.4 points and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) mayors and commissioners bagging 57.5 points, all below the passing grade of 60, DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) told a press conference.
“Ma not only flunked the course, he does not even qualify to re-sit the exam,” Lin said, referring to the provision allowing students who fail an exam, but score more than 40 points, to retake it and attempt to pass.
The poll was conducted between Dec. 10 and Dec. 11, collected 1,304 valid samples and had a margin of errors of 2.77 percentage points.
Lin said that the survey showed that public discontent with Ma was widespread, with the majority of respondents in all geographic regions expressing disappointment with the president’s performance.
However, the most surprising result was that 24.4 percent of respondents in Taipei, where Ma served as mayor from 2000 to 2008, gave the president zero points for his performance this year, Lin said.
Overall, 70.3 percent of the respondents gave Ma a failing score (less than 60), of which 21.7 percent said he deserved a “goose egg for his pitiful governance.”
Respondents were also polled on Ma’s performance in 10 policy areas.
In this section, Ma earned his highest scores in cross-strait relations (46.7 points) and human rights protection (46.3 points), scoring the lowest in food safety (30.5), narrowing the nation’s wealth gap (30.5) and stabilizing commodity prices (33).
“Ma has even failed to pass the 60-point mark in cross-strait relations, which he always likes to brag about, showing that people’s lives under his governance have been miserable,” Lin said.
Meanwhile, DPP mayors and commissioners outperformed their KMT counterparts in the survey, garnering an average score of 69 points, almost 12 points higher than KMT leaders’ average.
In a separate survey on the Greater Taichung mayoral election conducted by cable television channel TVBS, DPP Legislator Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) led Greater Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) of the KMT by 7 percentage points — 48 percent to 41 percent — in a head-to-head election, with 11 percent of those polled undecided, according to the station’s poll center.
Lin, who is vying for the DPP nomination with fellow DPP Legislator Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌), increased his advantage from the 2 percentage points he had in a July poll by 5 points, the station said.
The poll center said Lin beat Hu 49 percent to 30 percent among independent voters.
Lin led the other potential KMT candidates by double-digit margins, including KMT Legislator Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕), former Presidential Office secretary-general Liao Liou-yi (廖了以), KMT Legislator Tsai Chin-lung (蔡錦隆) and deputy Minister of the Interior Hsiao Chia-chi (蕭家淇).
The poll was conducted between Friday last week and Monday, during which it collected 858 valid samples. It had a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points.
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