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.
The Philippines is working behind the scenes to enhance its defensive cooperation with Taiwan, the Washington Post said in a report published on Monday. “It would be hiding from the obvious to say that Taiwan’s security will not affect us,” Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilbert Teodoro Jr told the paper in an interview on Thursday last week. Although there has been no formal change to the Philippines’ diplomatic stance on recognizing Taiwan, Manila is increasingly concerned about Chinese encroachment in the South China Sea, the report said. The number of Chinese vessels in the seas around the Philippines, as well as Chinese
‘A SERIOUS THREAT’: Japan has expressed grave concern over the Strait’s security over the years, which demonstrated Tokyo’s firm support for peace in the area, an official said China’s military drills around Taiwan are “incompatible” with peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Takeshi Iwaya said during a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi (王毅) on Thursday. “Peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is important for the international community, including Japan,” Iwaya told Wang during a meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN-related Foreign Ministers’ Meetings in Kuala Lumpur. “China’s large-scale military drills around Taiwan are incompatible with this,” a statement released by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday cited Iwaya as saying. The Foreign Ministers’ Meetings are a series of diplomatic
URBAN COMBAT: FIM-92 Stinger shoulder-fired missiles from the US made a rare public appearance during early-morning drills simulating an invasion of the Taipei MRT The ongoing Han Kuang military exercises entered their sixth day yesterday, simulating repelling enemy landings in Penghu County, setting up fortifications in Tainan, laying mines in waters in Kaohsiung and conducting urban combat drills in Taipei. At 5am in Penghu — part of the exercise’s first combat zone — participating units responded to a simulated rapid enemy landing on beaches, combining infantry as well as armored personnel. First Combat Zone Commander Chen Chun-yuan (陳俊源) led the combined armed troops utilizing a variety of weapons systems. Wang Keng-sheng (王鏗勝), the commander in charge of the Penghu Defense Command’s mechanized battalion, said he would give
‘REALISTIC’ APPROACH: The ministry said all the exercises were scenario-based and unscripted to better prepare personnel for real threats and unexpected developments The army’s 21st Artillery Command conducted a short-range air defense drill in Taoyuan yesterday as part of the Han Kuang exercises, using the indigenous Sky Sword II (陸射劍二) missile system for the first time in the exercises. The armed forces have been conducting a series of live-fire and defense drills across multiple regions, simulating responses to a full-scale assault by Chinese forces, the Ministry of National Defense said. The Sky Sword II missile system was rapidly deployed and combat-ready within 15 minutes to defend Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport in a simulated attack, the ministry said. A three-person crew completed setup and