Public approval of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) performance has dropped to the lowest level since she took office on May 20, while that of Premier Lin Chuan (林全) remains below 30 percent, according to a survey released yesterday.
Tsai’s performance received an approval rating of 37.6 percent in the Taiwan Indicators Survey Research (TISR) survey, conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday, down by 0.8 percentage points from the previous survey.
The dissatisfaction rating reached 46.4 percent, an improvement from 48.3 percent in a previous poll, the survey showed.
The satisfaction rating was the lowest to date and compared with a 54.6 percent rating by the private survey company conducted in late June.
As for Lin, 28.7 percent of respondents said they are satisfied with the premier’s performance, up from 28 percent in the previous poll, while 48 percent said they are not satisfied, down from 53 percent.
Asked about the poll’s results, Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang (黃重諺) said that “there are different public polls, but we will still take them all as references.”
The government will do its utmost to promote reforms to meet the high expectations of society, Huang said.
Since May 20, TISR has conducted surveys on the performance of the new government every six weeks through telephone interviews.
In the latest poll, 1,005 randomly selected people aged 20 or older were interviewed.
The survey has a margin of error of 3.1 percent.
Without completed infrastructure and training, the expedited sale of new F-16s from the US could become a burden rather than a help, a military official said yesterday. Reuters on Thursday last week reported that Washington is looking to accelerate the delivery of 66 new F-16C/D Block 70 aircraft in response to what it sees as increasing intimidation by Beijing. Under the terms of the original US$8 billion deal signed in 2019, the US is expected to deliver a single-seater and double-seater for testing next year, then deliver the 66 new aircraft in batches of four or five from 2024 to 2026. The officials
SLIGHTS: Beijing intends to display pro-unification messages and prominently feature Taiwanese volunteers in its propaganda videos, an official said Taiwanese officials are poised to boycott next month’s Beijing Winter Olympics, an official with knowledge of the matter said yesterday, citing concerns that China would slight Taiwan during the Games. This year’s Winter Olympics are scheduled to open on Friday next week amid a diplomatic boycott by Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Lithuania, New Zealand, the UK and the US in response to China’s human rights abuses against Uighurs in Xinjiang and crackdowns on democracy advocates in Hong Kong. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said that a Cabinet-appointed task force has determined that Taiwan’s delegation would abstain from the opening and
‘CHINESE STYLE’: Taipei residents do not want smart city efforts based on ‘centralized control, tracking and mass surveillance,’ the campaign’s initiators said Taipei City Councilor Miao Po-ya (苗博雅) yesterday said that her campaign against the Taipeipass (台北通) app has garnered almost 10,000 signatures since Friday, but exposed her to insults and threats by telephone and through social media. It seems to be a “coordinated attack,” as all the messages follow a similar pattern, she said, citing as an example one saying: “We love the Taipeipass. Do not block the smart city plan. Stop interfering with Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲).” Some people had left disparaging remarks and false information when signing up for the online petition, and there have been attempts to disrupt her
INCREASED COOPERATION: Part of the funding is to be used to further the aims of a Taiwan-US human resources development platform launched in 2015, a source said An increase of ￥100 million (US$878,765) to Japan’s annual foreign affairs budget is for “advancing the Japan-Taiwan relationship,” information published on the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Web site showed. The ministry’s budget for last year was ￥1.7 billion; it was increased to ￥1.8 billion for this year. The ministry wrote that the additional funding was to be used for “cooperating with allies and like-minded countries to safeguard the universal values of the international community.” Regarding Taiwan specifically, the ministry said that it was “responding to an increasingly complex security and economic environment,” and that it aimed to “strengthen diplomacy and cooperation
RSS