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Ma administration
hurt by graft: poll
TIP OF THE ICEBERG? Most respondents said more
scandals have yet to come to light, and that ‘Next Magazine’ did a far better
job fighting corruption than the SID
By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
Hsu Yung-ming, convener of Taiwan
Thinktank’s public opinion poll panel, second right, is joined by Liao Da-chi, a
political science professor at National Sun Yat-sen University, left, and
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Chia-lung as he announces the
results of a survey on perceptions of corruption.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
The image of President Ma Ying-jeou’s
(馬英九) administration has taken a hit since a scandal involving former Executive
Yuan secretary-general Lin Yi-shih (林益世) made headlines last month, with a
majority of the respondents in a survey released yesterday saying they did not
believe Vice President Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) claim of innocence in the case and
that there are likely more cases of corruption in the government.
Citing the poll conducted by Taiwan Thinktank, Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明), convener of
the think tank’s public opinion poll panel, said two out of three — or 66.7
percent of — respondents said they believed more high-ranking government
officials were involved in the scandal, while 73.4 percent said they believed
there were more undiscovered scandals.
Despite Wu in the past week pleading his innocence in the case, 64.4 percent of
those polled said Wu’s explanation was questionable, while only 15.4 percent
said they believed Wu and 20.2 percent said they had no opinion.
Ma has also been hurt by the widening scandal, with his “integrity index,” which
asked respondents to rate the president’s integrity on a scale of zero to 10,
falling from 5.84 in May to 5.43 this month, according to the poll.
Half of the respondents were not happy with the performance of the Supreme
Prosecutors’ Office Special Investigation Division (SID), saying the SID had
been “passive” in its probe into the case, while 31.6 percent said the division
had been “aggressive.”
Public dissatisfaction with how the case was handled by government agencies
showed as 39.2 percent of the respondents said Chinese-language Next Magazine,
which broke the scandal, deserves the most credit for fighting corruption.
Ironically, the magazine has won more recognition than the combined support
received by a number of anti-corruption agencies, including the SID, which was
supported by 16.2 percent of those polled, the Investigation Bureau (5.6
percent) and Agency Against Corruption (3.3 percent).
The results showed that Wu might have to do more to prove his innocence in the
scandal, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) told
the press conference hosted by Taiwan Thinktank.
The survey also revealed that the DPP should not be overly happy about the
scandal that has dealt a blow to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Lin said,
because 41.8 percent of the respondents said both the DPP and the KMT were
corrupt.
However, National Sun Yet-sen University political science professor Liao Da-chi
(廖達琪) said she saw a “silver lining” in the pessimistic results.
“Perhaps Taiwanese have finally come to realize that it is extremely difficult
to have ‘clean politics’ and they should always be skeptical about political
parties and politicians,” Liao said.
That mentality is what democracy is all about, she added, because a democratic
political system does not encourage people to trust the government completely.
“People’s trust in the media is not a bad thing either, since most well-known
scandals, among them the Watergate scandal, were first reported by the media,”
Liao said.
The survey on a wide range of issues showed that Ma’s approval ratings remained
low at 23.4 percent, while 65.3 percent of the respondents were not satisfied
with the president’s performance.
On the US beef controversy, 66.5 percent of those polled said they had no
confidence in the government’s ability to implement the international standard
for the livestock feed additive ractopamine.
More than half — 56.4 percent — of the respondents supported the stricter
standard of 2 parts per billion (ppb), instead of the government-endorsed 10ppb,
as the maximum residue level for ractopamine.
The poll collected 1,073 valid samples between Wednesday and Thursday and has a
margin of error of 3 percentage points.
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