Many Taiwanese were disappointed with the way the government handled Taiwan's participation in this year's APEC meetings, according to a poll released by the Gallup organization yesterday.
Nearly half of respondents to the survey said they were dissatisfied with the government's overall handling of the APEC meetings that concluded in Shanghai on Oct. 21. The survey questioned 1,120 adults aged 20 and older through telephone inquiries.
Thirty percent of respondents said they were satisfied, while the remainder either said they did not have an opinion or declined to answer the question.
Taiwan was absent from the APEC summit after China refused to provide an invitation to former vice president Li Yuan-tzu (李元簇), who was handpicked by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to attend the event on his behalf.
The poll also showed 73.6 percent of respondents said they felt the DPP lacked the necessary expertise in handling international affairs, while 13.3 percent said the opposite.
Sixty-eight percent of respondents said it's very likely that Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan's (
In a flare-up at a news conference during the APEC ministerial meeting on Oct. 18, Tang cut short a speech by Taiwan's Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Hsin-yi (林信義). Tang said it would be "a waste of time" to allow Lin to speak.
Tang was then visibly irritated by a question from a Taiwanese journalist about the dispute that had erupted over Taiwan's representation at the APEC summit.
When survey respondents were asked if they would back the "one country, two systems" model after the APEC fiasco, 28 percent said yes while 54.9 percent said no.
The survey also showed political parties would see little benefit in the year-end elections by stirring up discussions on the APEC fiasco.
While 25.4 percent of respondents said the DPP would likely benefit from the APEC episode, 26.5 percent said the KMT would be the likely beneficiary, while roughly 17 percent said the People First Party is likely to gain.
The survey's results, analysts said, indicate that no political party has emerged a winner in the meeting's wake.
"All political parties have been losers in this game as the public has shown aversion to the ways both the ruling party and the opposition parties tackled the issue," said Emile Sheng (盛治仁), a political science analyst at Soochow University.
The DPP-led government has uttered disparate views on the issue, with few admitting pitfalls within the internal decision-making process, with the exception being outspoken Vice President Annette Lu (
The opposition parties, Sheng said, did nothing constructive but still attacked the DPP government, claiming the way the DPP handled the issue stemmed from its ambition to win the year-end elections. But about 60 percent of respondents said they disagreed with this view.
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