Source: United Daily News

September 13, 2013

 

Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng’s (王金平) illegal lobbying in a court case has stirred up a political tempest in Taiwan. According to a public survey released by the United Daily News on September 13, 83% of the respondents were aware of the scandal. 67% of those respondents claimed that the disciplinary action meted out by the Kuomintang (KMT) to revoke Wang’s party membership was excessive, 19% stated that his membership revocation was appropriate, and 1% considered the disciplinary action too lenient. On the other hand, 48% of the same respondents stated that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) should mete out disciplinary action against its party whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) for his involvement in the scandal, while 22% disagreed.

 

The survey revealed that the respondents held divergent views on the nature of Wang’s interference in Ker’s court case. Although 33% of the respondents regarded Wang’s decision to telephone Justice Minister Tzeng Yung-fu (曾勇夫) as intentional “(illegal) lobbying,” 41% believed that Wang had just been expressing “concern,” and 26% said that they did not know.

 

The survey also revealed that although President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had repeatedly stressed that the KMT’s resolution to revoke Wang’s party membership was intended to “safeguard the nation’s justice system,” 66% of the respondents who were aware of the story considered such disciplinary action as a political power struggle within the KMT and only 19% believed that President Ma was fighting for the nation’s justice system. 

 

In addition, according to the same survey, 63% of the respondents thought that the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) under the Prosecutor-General’s Office had abused its authority and only 17% believed that the SIU’s conduct in the case had been appropriate and supported the SIU. 

 

The public opinion poll was conducted from September 11 to 12 with 1,484 people over 20 years of age successfully surveyed while 559 people declined to be surveyed. The margin of error associated with this sampling is plus or minus 2.5 % with a 95% confidence interval. 

Source: http://udn.com/NEWS/NATIONAL/NATS2/8160773.shtml