The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday expressed dissatisfaction with the performance of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, saying the general public had suffered hardships in the month since Ma’s inauguration.
DPP caucus whips William Lai (賴清德) and Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said Ma’s administration set six records over the past month: offering the most apologies, incurring debts at the fastest speed, allowing the largest increase in consumer prices, seeing the largest decline in the stock index, experiencing the largest fall in the government’s approval rating and paying the most attention to playing politics.
DPP Legislator Wong Chin-chu (翁金珠) said the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government raised fuel prices immediately after its inauguration and is now ready to hike electricity rates starting next month.
PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Taiwan’s stock index plummeted by more than 1,200 points over the past month, with total stock value dropping by NT$3.17 trillion US$1.04 billion and each investor losing NT$390,000 on average, Wong said.
DPP Legislator Lee Chun-yee (李俊毅) said that while Taiwan’s stock index only decreased by 2.21 percent during the cross-strait missile crisis in 1995, the index has now lost as much as 14 percent in one month.
This was a situation he said that proved “mistaken policies are worse than Chinese missiles.”
Lee failed to note, however, that the stock market dropped at an even more precipitous rate last year under the DPP administration, when it fell by 18.5 percent, from 9,809.88 to 8,276.26, between Oct. 29 and Nov. 28.
Referring to the results of a survey conducted on Monday and Tuesday by the TVBS cable network, Lai said that approval ratings for Ma and Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) registered only 41 percent and 38 percent, respectively.
Lai said the ratings, which were a far cry from the 77 percent received by former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and the 65 percent by former premier Tang Fei (唐飛) a month after their inauguration in 2000, fully demonstrated the public’s dissatisfaction with the performance of Ma’s administration.
Restating her doubts about the allegiance of Ma and his administrative team, Kuan claimed that Ma and many officials in his administration appear prepared to flee the country at any time as they either once held permanent residency rights of another country, still hold foreign permanent resident status or have applied for foreign permanent residency rights.
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