Only 2.3 percent of Taiwanese polled in a survey released yesterday said they think that politicians have a work ethic and are trustworthy, and 40.8 percent said they agreed with the statement “one cannot feed on democracy as he feeds on rice.”
The Professor Huang Kun-huei Education Foundation said that last month it conducted a survey to gauge people’s understanding of democracy, science and aesthetics — three of the five cultural literacy indicators of modern citizens set out by the Ministry of Education.
Asked to choose which among four professions — physicians, judges, reporters and politicians — they thought had the best work ethic and was most trustworthy, 66.2 percent of respondents said physicians, followed by judges at 7.9 percent, reporters at 3.6 percent and politicians at 2.3 percent.
Photo: CNA
One-fifth of the respondents said that they did not have a preference.
The younger and more educated a respondent was, the more they tended to find physicians trustworthy, the foundation said.
In another question, respondents were asked what they thought elected officials valued most, to which 55.5 percent of respondents said personal gain, 29 percent said party interests and 9.3 percent said national interests.
The poll showed that 70.9 percent of respondents who worked as civil servants, public school teachers or military personnel said they believed that elected officials valued personal gain the most.
Asked whether they agreed with the statement that “the democracy and freedom people enjoy nowadays are built upon the sacrifices of many people,” 80.2 percent of people said they did, while 16.3 percent said they did not, the survey found.
However, asked if they identified with the statement “one cannot feed on democracy as he feeds on rice” — said by Hon Hai Precision Industry founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) during the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential primary — 40.8 percent of respondents said they did, compared with 52.8 percent of people who said otherwise.
The results showed that respondents aged 20 to 34 tended to dismiss the statement, with 66.3 percent saying that they disagreed with it, while 50.3 of those aged 35 to 49 said they related to it.
When asked if they agreed that citizens can respect and appreciate different languages and cultures, 88.7 percent of respondents said they did, while only 7.1 percent said they did not.
Regarding whether they agreed that the public can resolve conflicts or voice their discontent rationally, 71.2 percent of respondents said they could, while 23.7 percent said they could not.
On whether they still believed the statement that the judiciary “spares the lives of the rich and sentences the poor to death,” 57.7 percent of people said they still did, while 35.3 percent said they did not.
The highest percentage of respondents that said they held this belief were aged 35 to 49, with 65 percent of respondents saying that they agreed with that portrayal of the judiciary.
Commenting on the survey results, Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) told a news conference in Taipei that the analogy made between democracy and rice is an oversimplification, as the pain of not having food to eat is no greater than having one’s democracy and freedom deprived.
People should be entitled to the right to live with dignity instead of just asking for food to eat; otherwise they would be mere slaves, who also have rice to eat, he said.
Humans, the most intelligent of all beings, should not just pursue basic subsistence like animals do, but should use their wisdom to improve the lives of others, he said.
The survey collected 1,070 valid samples nationwide and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
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