By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his administration received 46.5 points out of a possible 100 for their performance during Ma’s five years in office, a public opinion poll released yesterday showed.
The poll, conducted by Taiwan Indicator Survey Research (TISR), comes a week before the anniversary of Ma’s first-term inauguration in 2008.
The results showed that Ma scored the lowest compared with five similar polls since December 2008 — in which he received scores ranging between 50.7 and 57.9 points. He has never achieved a passing grade of 60 points.
Respondents who identified themselves as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supporters gave Ma an average score of 60.7 points, but the score dipped to 35.2 points among pan-green supporters and 43.6 points among independent respondents, the survey showed.
The president’s credibility and approval rating remained in the basement, with 17.9 percent of respondents saying they approved of his performance, while 69.6 percent said they were not satisfied with it.
Almost six in 10 respondents, or 57 percent, found Ma untrustworthy, while 25.7 percent said Ma was credible.
Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), who became Ma’s fourth premier in February, did not fare well either, with an approval rating of 20.7 percent.
TISR said in a press release that Jiang’s disapproval rating of 44.2 percent was 18.9 percentage points higher than that of February, which appeared to be because of his unpopular policies.
As for Cabinet members, most of whom assumed their duties in February, Minister of the Interior Lee Hung-yuan (李鴻源), Minister of Culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) and Department of Health Minister Chiu Wen-ta (邱文達) were the only ones to receive higher approval ratings than disapproval ratings.
However, respondents appeared unfamiliar with the make-up of the Cabinet. Between 41 percent and 77 percent of respondents did not know about a specific Cabinet member.
Council for Labor Affairs Minister Pan Shih-wei (潘世偉) had the poorest rating among all officials named in the poll, with a disapproval rating of 43.3 percent and a 6.7 percent approval rating.
The poll, conducted between Wednesday and Thursday last week, collected 1,001 valid samples and had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.