By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) released a report examining complaints from the public and named the seven-in-one elections as its priority for next year.
DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said his party’s No. 1 goal next year is to win the seven-in-one local elections and said President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration has no one to blame but itself for the public discontent that has almost reached a boiling point.
“We have not seen the government make any effort to improve people’s livelihood. Instead, the Ma administration had spent much of its energy on political power struggles,” Su said after the DPP’s Policy Research Committee released its report on the list of people’s top-10 complaints this year.
The list, which was unveiled by committee executive-director Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) in the party’s weekly Central Standing Committee meeting, said the stagnant macroeconomy that saw a poor GDP growth rate of 1.74 percent, an unemployment rate of 4.2 percent and an average wage that slid back to the level it was 15 years ago were the three most common complaints.
Also on the list were a number of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) policies that it said had contributed to the poor economy.
The Ma administration’s mishandling has led to issues including increased fuel, electricity and natural gas prices, inaction on rising house prices and the implementation of capital gains tax on securities transactions, Wu said.
People voiced strong discontent about the supplementary premium they have to pay in accordance with the reformed National Health Insurance program and were confused about the 12-year national education system, Wu said, adding that both reform plans were considered failures.
Taiwanese appear to have found the Ma administration’s inaction on cases related to food safety, environmental pollution and illegal property development unbearable, the report said.
The list said the bottom two complaints were Ma’s launch of a purging of his political rivals, known as the “September strife,” and his insistence to resume construction at the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市).
The DPP hopes to make great strides next year, Su wrote in an open letter to DPP members, in which he reviewed the party’s achievements this year and what it hoped to achieve in the future.
Su said that the DPP’s main goal would be to win at least half of the 22 administrative zones in the mayoral and commissioner elections, including three of the six special municipalities and eight of the 16 cities and counties.