A poll released yesterday found an overwhelming majority of respondents — 82.96 percent — are unhappy with the way the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) handled the Sunflower movement protests over the past three weeks.
The survey, conducted by the Chinese-language Liberty Times’ (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) polling center on Wednesday and Thursday nights, also found that a majority of respondents thought the student activism would deepen democracy in Taiwan.
The Sunflower movement became the name of the protesters who occupied the Legislative Yuan on March 18 to protest against the government’s handling of the cross-strait service trade agreement.
Photo: Lin Yi-chang, Taipei Times
The movement’s sit-in inside the legislature’s main chamber ended on Thursday evening when more than 100 protesters left the building.
When asked about the movement’s demands that a law governing oversight of cross-strait negotiations be passed before a review of the service trade pact is resumed, 74.19 percent of respondents agreed with the demand, 17.44 percent disagreed and 8.37 percent had no opinion, the poll found.
More than half of those polled — 58.32 percent — were against student protesters having to face legal action over their actions.
Of those surveyed, 34.28 percent favored the judiciary investigating the protesters, while 6.4 percent declined to comment.
Even among supporters of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the dissatisfaction rates were high.
Analysis showed that among those respondents who said they favored the KMT, 71.16 percent were not happy with the government’s handling of the Legislative Yuan protest, while 25 percent backed the administration.
Among those who said they supported the Democratic Progressive Party, 94.44 percent said that the government had mishandled the situation, while 3.47 percent said they were satisfied with the government’s reaction.
Among those respondents who said they were politically neutral, 82.47 percent did not agree with the government’s handling of the student-led opposition, while only 10.6 percent were in favor.
Comparing the Presidential Office’s response to the Wild Lilies student protest in 1990, when then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) met with student representatives at his office and gave concrete answers to their demands, the poll found that respondents were unhappy with the Presidential Office’s initial criticism of the Sunflower movement and its subsequent sidestepping of the students’ demands.
The Liberty Times poll interviewed 1,015 people aged 20 or above through a random sampling of the last two digits of home telephone numbers nationwide.
The poll has a margin of error of 3.08 percentage points positive or negative and was completely funded by the Liberty Times.
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
‘BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS’: The US military’s aim is to continue to make any potential Chinese invasion more difficult than it already is, US General Ronald Clark said The likelihood of China invading Taiwan without contest is “very, very small” because the Taiwan Strait is under constant surveillance by multiple countries, a US general has said. General Ronald Clark, commanding officer of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), the US Army’s largest service component command, made the remarks during a dialogue hosted on Friday by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Asked by the event host what the Chinese military has learned from its US counterpart over the years, Clark said that the first lesson is that the skill and will of US service members are “unmatched.” The second
STANDING TOGETHER: Amid China’s increasingly aggressive activities, nations must join forces in detecting and dealing with incursions, a Taiwanese official said Two senior Philippine officials and one former official yesterday attended the Taiwan International Ocean Forum in Taipei, the first high-level visit since the Philippines in April lifted a ban on such travel to Taiwan. The Ocean Affairs Council hosted the two-day event at the National Taiwan University Hospital International Convention Center. Philippine Navy spokesman Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad, Coast Guard spokesman Grand Commodore Jay Tarriela and former Philippine Presidential Communications Office assistant secretary Michel del Rosario participated in the forum. More than 100 officials, experts and entrepreneurs from 15 nations participated in the forum, which included discussions on countering China’s hybrid warfare
MORE DEMOCRACY: The only solution to Taiwan’s current democratic issues involves more democracy, including Constitutional Court rulings and citizens exercising their civil rights , Lai said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is not the “motherland” of the Republic of China (ROC) and has never owned Taiwan, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday. The speech was the third in a series of 10 that Lai is scheduled to deliver across Taiwan. Taiwan is facing external threats from China, Lai said at a Lions Clubs International banquet in Hsinchu. For example, on June 21 the army detected 12 Chinese aircraft, eight of which entered Taiwanese waters, as well as six Chinese warships that remained in the waters around Taiwan, he said. Beyond military and political intimidation, Taiwan