Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday voiced his disagreement with a recent poll that showed his disapproval rate rose to 48.5 percent, the highest since he took over the premiership a year ago.
“If interviewees were asked about the controversies on the expansion projects at the Central Taiwan Science Park, the land expropriation in Dapu (大埔) and the fire at the sixth naphtha cracker plant, of course the disapproval rate would rise,” Wu said when approached for comments on the recent poll.
“If the questions had been constructed differently, the questionnaire would have led to different results,” he added, citing other polls that put more than 80 percent of the public in agreement with the government’s responses to the controversies.
He did not name the polls he was referring to, however.
On Friday, the Chinese-language monthly Global Views released its latest poll that showed President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and the Cabinet’s approval ratings on the decline. The poll showed Ma’s disapproval rating at 57 percent, a slight increase from 56.2 percent last month.
It also showed Wu’s disapproval rating had gone up from a low of 39 percent in February.
Regarding the Cabinet’s performance, the survey saw an increase of 1.6 points to 51.8 percent in its disapproval rating, the highest since August last year, when the rating was at 63.2 percent following public dissatisfaction with the government’s response to Typhoon Morakot.
Wu took over as premier after his predecessor Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) resigned to take responsibility for the government’s much-criticized disaster relief efforts.
“No matter what polls show, there are always things that the government does not do well enough,” Wu said yesterday. “The decrease in the government’s approval ratings means that people expect the government to do better. The government has to work harder.”
Weighing on the Ma administration have been a string of confrontations between affected residents and police over a slew of environmental disputes, among which include the fate of the giant Formosa Petrochemicals refinery complex after three fires in six months raised questions about safety and environmental damage.
The government has also backed a new factory by the world’s fourth-largest LCD panel maker, AU Optronics, even after farmers and environmentalists blocked it with a lawsuit last month.
Meanwhile, unemployment remains at a stubborn 5.2 percent, unusually high for Taiwan, and statistics from the Ministry of the Interior show that the number of households living below the poverty line rose to a record high of 108,000 in the second quarter of this year.
“People are impatient with the Ma administration for slow reform and its lack of efficiency,” Tamkang University strategic studies professor Alexander Huang (黃介正) said. “It’s reputation, expectations and frustration combined.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY REUTERS AND STAFF WRITER
Organizing one national referendum and 26 recall elections targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators could cost NT$1.62 billion (US$55.38 million), the Central Election Commission said yesterday. The cost of each recall vote ranges from NT$16 million to NT$20 million, while that of a national referendum is NT$1.1 billion, the commission said. Based on the higher estimate of NT$20 million per recall vote, if all 26 confirmed recall votes against KMT legislators are taken into consideration, along with the national referendum on restarting the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant, the total could be as much as NT$1.62 billion, it said. The commission previously announced
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday welcomed NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s remarks that the organization’s cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners must be deepened to deter potential threats from China and Russia. Rutte on Wednesday in Berlin met German Chancellor Friedrich Merz ahead of a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of Germany’s accession to NATO. He told a post-meeting news conference that China is rapidly building up its armed forces, and the number of vessels in its navy outnumbers those of the US Navy. “They will have another 100 ships sailing by 2030. They now have 1,000 nuclear warheads,” Rutte said, adding that such
Tropical Storm Nari is not a threat to Taiwan, based on its positioning and trajectory, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Nari has strengthened from a tropical depression that was positioned south of Japan, it said. The eye of the storm is about 2,100km east of Taipei, with a north-northeast trajectory moving toward the eastern seaboard of Japan, CWA data showed. Based on its current path, the storm would not affect Taiwan, the agency said.
The cosponsors of a new US sanctions package targeting Russia on Thursday briefed European allies and Ukraine on the legislation and said the legislation would also have a deterrent effect on China and curb its ambitions regarding Taiwan. The bill backed by US senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal calls for a 500 percent tariff on goods imported from countries that buy Russian oil, gas, uranium and other exports — targeting nations such as China and India, which account for about 70 percent of Russia’s energy trade, the bankroll of much of its war effort. Graham and Blumenthal told The Associated Press
RSS