Most people do not favor President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) running for re-election, with barely a third supporting her election for a second term, the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) National Policy Foundation said yesterday.
A foundation survey conducted from May 7 to Tuesday showed that Tsai’s disapproval rating outweighed her approval rating at 56 percent to 38.3 percent.
Moreover, only 29.8 percent of respondents were supportive of her second-term bid, while 52.8 percent were opposed, the poll showed.
“Tsai’s presidency has been autocratic, arrogant and incompetent, and our presidential approval poll shows that her path to being re-elected would be a difficult one,” foundation chief executive officer Kao Yuang-kuang (高永光) said. “Tsai could well become the first single-term Taiwanese president since the presidency became a directly elected office in 1996.”
Tsai’s approval rating has been consistently lower than most of her predecessors, including Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), who commanded an approval rating of about 40 percent in the early part of his second term, he said.
While former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), of the KMT, maintained an approval of 23 percent during his re-election, the public had been more supportive of his campaign than Tsai’s, showing a disconnect between public approval and voting behavior at the time, he said.
However, public disapproval of Tsai’s performance and opposition to her re-election are nearly identical in the poll, indicating a direct correlation, he said.
A public backlash against the Tsai administration’s “attack” on institutions and the unpopularity of her policies are the main reasons for her low approval rating, Kao said, citing pension reform and the Control Yuan’s censuring of prosecutors as examples.
Tsai could have asked the Council of Grand Justices to decide whether its legalization of same-sex marriage in 2017 should take precedence over the passage of a referendum in November last year, when a majority voted in favor of retaining the Civil Code’s definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, he said.
Instead, Tsai forced the legalization of same-sex marriage through the legislature yesterday, he added.
“At the moment, the Democratic Progressive Party looks more like the undemocratically regressive party,” Kao said.
“A sign of Tsai’s weakness is former premier William Lai’s (賴清德) campaign for presidential nomination, which has survived despite Tsai’s best efforts to bury it,” Taipei City Councilor Wang Hong-wei (王鴻薇) said.
Taiwan is to commence mass production of the Tien Kung (天弓, “Sky Bow”) III, IV and V missiles by the second quarter of this year if the legislature approves the government’s NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.78 billion) special defense budget, an official said yesterday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said that the advanced systems are expected to provide crucial capabilities against ballistic and cruise missiles for the proposed “T-Dome,” an advanced, multi-layered air defense network. The Tien Kung III is an air defense missile with a maximum interception altitude of 35km. The Tien Kung IV and V
The disruption of 941 flights in and out of Taiwan due to China’s large-scale military exercises was no accident, but rather the result of a “quasi-blockade” used to simulate creating the air and sea routes needed for an amphibious landing, a military expert said. The disruptions occurred on Tuesday and lasted about 10 hours as China conducted live-fire drills in the Taiwan Strait. The Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) said the exercises affected 857 international flights and 84 domestic flights, affecting more than 100,000 travelers. Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a research fellow at the government-sponsored Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said the air
Taiwan lacks effective and cost-efficient armaments to intercept rockets, making the planned “T-Dome” interception system necessary, two experts said on Tuesday. The concerns were raised after China’s military fired two waves of rockets during live-fire drills around Taiwan on Tuesday, part of two-day exercises code-named “Justice Mission 2025.” The first wave involved 17 rockets launched at 9am from Pingtan in China’s Fujian Province, according to Lieutenant General Hsieh Jih-sheng (謝日升) of the Office of the Deputy Chief of the General Staff for Intelligence at the Ministry of National Defense. Those rockets landed 70 nautical miles (129.6km) northeast of Keelung without flying over Taiwan,
A strong continental cold air mass is to bring pollutants to Taiwan from tomorrow, the Ministry of Environment said today, as it issued an “orange” air quality alert for most of the country. All of Taiwan except for Hualien and Taitung counties is to be under an “orange” air quality alert tomorrow, indicating air quality that is unhealthy for sensitive groups. In China, areas from Shandong to Shanghai have been enveloped in haze since Saturday, the ministry said in a news release. Yesterday, hourly concentrations of PM2.5 in these areas ranged from 65 to 160 micrograms per cubic meter (mg/m³), and pollutants were
RSS