A political storm surrounding Taiwan's Typhoon Morakot gained force Wednesday as the defence minister and cabinet secretary offered to resign over the government's slow response. President Ma Ying-jeou's approval rating dropped to an all-time low of 16 percent as public anger swelled over his government's handling of the disaster, a new opinion poll showed.
The number of confirmed dead rose to 136, while Ma has warned the death toll could climb to more than 500. In one southern village alone, Hsiaolin, 380 people are feared buried by mudslides. Angry survivors surrounded the president as he visited Hsiaolin on Wednesday. Ma burned incense sticks and bowed before a muddy plain that 12 days earlier was a valley.
"President, you've come way too late," a woman shouted at Ma in footage broadcast on cable news channels. The president tried to comfort a woman in a traditional Taiwanese funeral robe as she performed a Taoist ritual to summon the spirits of her relatives whose bodies have yet to be found. Ma promised to rebuild the village before the next election in 2012. "I want to make a sincere promise to you that Hsiaolin village will be rebuilt before my first term expires," he said.
Defence Minister Chen Chao-min and Cabinet Secretary General Hsueh Hsiang-chuan, who is in charge of co-ordination between ministries, offered to step down, Premier Liu Chao-shiuan confirmed.
The first political casualty was vice foreign minister Andrew Hsia Li-yan, who tendered his resignation on Tuesday for refusing overseas aid. The premier told a news conference he would decide next month whether to accept the resignations once he and Ma determine whether a Cabinet reshuffle is necessary.
He declined to answer when asked if it was true he had also offered to resign. The cabinet secretary had incurred public wrath after angrily justifying dining with his family at a five-star hotel on August 8, the day Morakot struck, saying it was Father's Day in Taiwan and "not out of line".
The defence ministry has been under fire for deploying too few troops during the initial rescue operation, with only 2,100 sent on August 9 before the number was dramatically increased to 43,300 five days later. Lin Hou-wang, a Ma adviser and National Taiwan University philosophy professor, said the Cabinet needed a complete overhaul "for letting society down".
"Somebody has to be responsible and the premier must step down right away for not acting fast enough during the typhoon to protect people's lives and reduce their losses," Lin told AFP. Ma and senior officials began a news conference on Tuesday by bowing in a symbolic apology to the Taiwanese people for their failures.
Ma promised an investigation into any mistakes made and vowed to punish anyone found to have been negligent, once the probe's results are published next month. Taiwan will create a national disaster prevention agency and reorient its military towards a greater focus on search-and-rescue operations, Ma said, adding extreme weather posed a greater threat than an invasion by China.