Ma winds up long stay, gives account of successes

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou of the opposition Kuomintang said yesterday that he has issued 116 policies, held 156 seminars and contacted people in over 200 lines of business during his four-month long-stay campaign.

Ma made the remarks at a press conference held yesterday morning to enumerate the achievements of his just-concluded tour.

He said through close contacts with grassroots people, he found quite a few unimaginable problems, but he also deeply the diligence and creativeness shown by local people.

"Fortunately, Taiwan's problem lies only in the fact there are problems with the government," Ma said.

The long-stay program has enabled him to learn about the difficulties, hardships, misery, resentment and expectations of locals, according to Ma. "This is a prerequisite condition for the president of a country," he said.

What people care about most are the economy, education and social order, Ma continued.

Statistics showed that during the four-month long-stay campaign, Ma spent 69 nights at 67 homes of grassroots people; released 116 policies, including 22 agricultural and fishery development policies, 18 economic development policies, and 14 cultural development policies.

Ma also visited 116 temples around the island, and made contacts with at least 11 types of farmers, such as rice, vegetables, tea, peanuts, hogs, and cattle, among others. "I really enjoyed getting together with them."

The program has worked well, judging from a public opinion survey conducted by the KMT. The poll, for instance, showed that after the long-stay campaign, Ma's lead over his counterpart Frank Hsieh of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has widened to 20 percentage points in terms of rate of support in central Taiwan counties of Changhua, Taichung and Nantou -- up 10 percentage points from before the program.