Half of Taiwanese believe the nation’s five-branch constitutional framework needs a complete overhaul, a poll released yesterday by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation showed.
According to the poll, 36.5 percent of respondents disagreed with the notion, while 8.1 percent had no opinion.
The five branches are the Executive Yuan, the Legislative Yuan, the Judicial Yuan, the Control Yuan and the Examination Yuan.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
Forty-five percent of respondents agreed to abolishing the Control Yuan, while 36.5 percent disagreed, the poll showed.
Forty percent backed abolishing the Examination Yuan, while 45.8 percent were against it. More than 40 percent supported abolishing both the Control Yuan and the Examination Yuan.
The question of whether to abolish the Control Yuan was backed by 60 percent of respondents who identified themselves as Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) supporters, while 27 percent of them were against it, foundation chairman Michael You (游盈隆) said.
Of those who support the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), only 37 percent agreed with abolishing the Control Yuan, with 53 percent against it, he said.
Fifty percent of Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) supporters agreed and 44 percent disagreed with the proposal, while among New Power Party (NPP) supporters, 53 percent agreed and 35 percent disagreed, he said.
A similar trend emerged in the responses to the question of whether to abolish the Examination Yuan, You said.
A majority of DPP supporters agreed with such a move, but a majority of KMT, TPP and NPP supporters disagreed, he said.
The poll found that 58.6 percent of respondents approved of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) handling of the nation’s major policies, while 34.4 percent disapproved.
It found that 59.6 percent approved of Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and his Cabinet’s performance, while 35.3 percent disapproved.
When asked about their opinion on “the public participating in criminal trials under the ‘national judge system’ together with career judges,” 82 percent did not understand what the system entailed, or had not heard of it.
The results show that the system is unknown to most Taiwanese, and only two in 10 people said they have a grasp of what it is about and how it works, You said.
“Despite most of the public not comprehending [the national judge system], the Tsai administration still pushed it through in the legislature’s extraordinary session,” You said.
“For this, we see the Tsai administration turning into an oligarchy. It is not willing to communicate with the public, but would use its legislative majority to force through policies it believes are good for people,” he added.
The Tsai administration is “becoming worse than the ‘enlightened despotism’ of former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國),” You said.
The survey was conducted among adult respondents from Monday to Wednesday last week. It collected 1,076 valid responses and has a margin of error of 2.99 percentage points.
Critics have panned the five-branch framework as an anachronistic, bureaucratic redundancy abused for patronage appointments.
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