The latest poll conducted by a local newspaper indicates that 39 percent of the respondents are currently satisfied with the performance of President Ma Ying-jeou, up 6 percent from a survey made last month amid the controversy over the government's decision to import beef from the United States.

Kuomintang (KMT) legislator Wu Yu-sheng formally apologized to the public at a news conference on Nov. 13 for his extramarital affair with Rebecca Sun, a beautiful and elegant piano teacher.

Premier Wu Den-yih survived his debut in the stormy session of the Legislative Yuan on September 18 where lawmakers of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) grilled him with throat-cutting questions about his one-day visit to Hong Kong on September 5, just before he was formally appointed the highest executive official in Taiwan by President Ma Ying-jeou.

President Ma Ying-jeou held a press conference on September 10 to present his new Cabinet to the public. In introducing Wu Den-yih, the new premier, Ma twice mistook him for the outgoing Premier Liu Chao-shiuan.

It was reported on Sept. 2 that the much anticipated Cabinet reshuffle to be announced shortly will be smaller than the “large-scale and comprehensive” overhaul promised by Premier Liu Chao-shiuan on Aug. 19.

The latest opinion polls indicate that most locals are urgently calling for a major reshuffle of the Cabinet, including the stepping down of Premier Liu Chao-shiuan, to take responsibility for the government's gross mismanagement of the disaster brought about by Typhoon Morakot.

When asked by a CNN reporter how to respond to the charge that his administration had not moved quickly enough to meet with the disaster of the typhoon, President Ma Ying-jeou said on August 16 that naturally he would bear all the responsibility, “after all I'm the president of this country.”

In view of the heavy damage inflicted by Typhoon Morakot on Taiwan, Wang Chien-hsuan, president of the Control Yuan (CY), the nation's highest watchdog body, announced on August 11 that four committees of the CY, involving two dozens of its members, will investigate the aftermath.

Yiin Chii-ming, the minister of economic affairs, openly apologized again on Friday, July 31, for the ECFA comic that was accused of “insulting the people of Tainan.”

Yiin Chii-ming, the economic minister, has apologized under pressure for insulting the people of Tainan in a comic strip published by the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) to promote the economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) between Taiwan and China.