“Taiwan voters have voted in a very clear way that they disapprove of what Tsai Ing-wen has done in her first two years which have been characterized by missed opportunities, wrong judgments and bad executions in all her major policy initiatives,” said Joanna Lei, former Taiwan legislator, during an interview with CGTN's The Point.
May 20 was the second anniversary of Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen taking office. The Taiwan NextGen Foundation and the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation (TPOF) released their polls on the anniversary date of her inauguration. The survey found that 53.5 percent of respondents support Tsai, while 44.4 percent of them were satisfied with her performance.
Of the six areas covered in the poll, the economy was the worst aspect in her two years in office, followed by cross-strait relations, among others, with 30 percent very dissatisfied with her economic governance.
“I think Tsai herself is not a very good economic mentor. She is not interested in economic affairs. She is a very political-driven leader, and she is not managing a very effective team in Taiwan to run the economy,” said Professor Wang Zhengxu from the Department of Political Science at Fudan University.
Taiwan's economy grew 3 percent in the first quarter of 2018 from a year earlier, but people are complaining that their wages did not go up, which was what she pledged during her campaign.
Taiwan’s legal minimum monthly wage stands at NT$22,000 (735 US dollars) compared with NT$15,840 two decades ago. Analysts say that the NT$25,000 starting monthly salary for college graduates, which has remained flat for around two decades couldn’t even make a decent living. Economic woes remain as the biggest challenge for Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen’s popularity rate.
