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Ma flunks out of
president class: poll
F IS FOR FAIL: The premier and local KMT
officials also failed the survey conducted by the DPP, which said that according
to the results, Ma did not even qualify for a retake
By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) received 39.2 points out of a possible 100 for his
performance as head of state this year, an opinion poll conducted by the
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) showed yesterday.
Ma’s administration also received poor grades, with Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺)
earning just 42.4 points and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) mayors and
commissioners bagging 57.5 points, all below the passing grade of 60, DPP
spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) told a press conference.
“Ma not only flunked the course, he does not even qualify to re-sit the exam,”
Lin said, referring to the provision allowing students who fail an exam, but
score more than 40 points, to retake it and attempt to pass.
The poll was conducted between Dec. 10 and Dec. 11, collected 1,304 valid
samples and had a margin of errors of 2.77 percentage points.
Lin said that the survey showed that public discontent with Ma was widespread,
with the majority of respondents in all geographic regions expressing
disappointment with the president’s performance.
However, the most surprising result was that 24.4 percent of respondents in
Taipei, where Ma served as mayor from 2000 to 2008, gave the president zero
points for his performance this year, Lin said.
Overall, 70.3 percent of the respondents gave Ma a failing score (less than 60),
of which 21.7 percent said he deserved a “goose egg for his pitiful governance.”
Respondents were also polled on Ma’s performance in 10 policy areas.
In this section, Ma earned his highest scores in cross-strait relations (46.7
points) and human rights protection (46.3 points), scoring the lowest in food
safety (30.5), narrowing the nation’s wealth gap (30.5) and stabilizing
commodity prices (33).
“Ma has even failed to pass the 60-point mark in cross-strait relations, which
he always likes to brag about, showing that people’s lives under his governance
have been miserable,” Lin said.
Meanwhile, DPP mayors and commissioners outperformed their KMT counterparts in
the survey, garnering an average score of 69 points, almost 12 points higher
than KMT leaders’ average.
In a separate survey on the Greater Taichung mayoral election conducted by cable
television channel TVBS, DPP Legislator Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) led Greater Taichung
Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) of the KMT by 7 percentage points — 48 percent to 41
percent — in a head-to-head election, with 11 percent of those polled undecided,
according to the station’s poll center.
Lin, who is vying for the DPP nomination with fellow DPP Legislator Tsai Chi-chang
(蔡其昌), increased his advantage from the 2 percentage points he had in a July
poll by 5 points, the station said.
The poll center said Lin beat Hu 49 percent to 30 percent among independent
voters.
Lin led the other potential KMT candidates by double-digit margins, including
KMT Legislator Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕), former Presidential Office secretary-general
Liao Liou-yi (廖了以), KMT Legislator Tsai Chin-lung (蔡錦隆) and deputy Minister of
the Interior Hsiao Chia-chi (蕭家淇).
The poll was conducted between Friday last week and Monday, during which it
collected 858 valid samples. It had a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points.
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