Tue, Mar 22, 2016 page3

• Nation ‘stuck’ for past 11 years: survey

  • By Jonathan Chin / Staff writer
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  Eighty-six percent of respondents to a poll by the Chinese-language United Daily News said they believe the nation has been “stuck” for the past 11 years.

  The poll, released yesterday, found that 86 percent of the respondents said they attribute the perceived national weakness to national policies becoming “stuck or stagnant,” and on average they believe the stagnation to have occurred 11 years ago.

  Forty-one percent of the survey respondents said they felt the nation became “stuck” during President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, while 39 percent of respondents said they felt national stagnation to have occurred during former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration.

  Twelve percent said they believed the stagnancy began under former presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) or Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石).

  Among the self-reported supporters of the pan-blue camp, 43 percent said Taiwan’s stagnation began during Chen’s presidency, while 37 percent of pan-blue supporters said it began on Ma’s watch.

  Forty-eight percent of self-reported pan-green voters said national stagnation began during Ma’s administration, while 38 percent said it started during Chen’s presidency.

  In a multiple-choice section in the survey, respondents were asked to identify the causes that are responsible for impairing the performance of the nation.

  Seventy-four percent identified partisanship and the political parties’ pursuit of selfish interests as the problem, while 43 percent blamed legislative inefficiency.

  Only about 20 percent of respondents agreed that Taiwan’s problems are caused by the unwillingness of talented people to serve in the government, or that there is too much democracy in Taiwan, the poll said.

  When asked about their hopes for president-elect Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) new government 64 percent of respondents said they believe Tsai should prioritize improving governmental efficiency, while 17 percent said that legislative reforms are urgent and 10 percent expressed a preference for constitutional reforms.

  However, respondents predominantly said that they hoped the government could become more efficient without weakening the democratic process of negotiations and consensus-building, the poll showed.

  Fifty-eight percent of the poll’s respondents said they prefer a government to respect democracy and engage consensus-building through negotiations, and 33 percent said they prefer a more centralized and efficient government.

  Of constitutional reform proposals known to the public, the most popular was allowing absentee ballots for citizens to vote in areas other than the districts to which they were registered, with a support rating of 67 percent. The measure was opposed by 29 percent of respondents.

  A majority of 58 percent of respondents said they are not in favor of a constitutional amendment lowering the voting age to 18 years, while 38 percent expressed support, the survey found.

  Meanwhile, the survey showed respondents gave the nation’s overall performance a failing average grade of 56 out of 100 points on average.

  The poll was conducted from Feb. 15 to Feb. 19. It had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, with 1019 valid samples, while 649 people refused to answer.
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