There are times for a politician when a perception of strength trumps a perception of compassion.
In President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) case, that time is now, and the reason for its timeliness is that just about everyone is lining up to criticize him.
This weekend there are dragon boat races around the country, and consistent with his sporting image and past practice during his time as Taipei mayor, Ma was set to take part in a dragon boat contest in Taipei.
But politicians from both sides of the fence have expressed dissatisfaction with Ma, saying that he should be tending to the wounds of the farming industry and other sectors in the south, who are mopping up after seasonally heavy rainfall.
Ma should have known from the outset that canceling his dragon boat jaunt and touring rain-affected areas in the south was the sensible political thing to do. It seems he did not. But now that he has changed his mind and pulled out of the Taipei bash, he hardly looks any better: It is perfectly obvious that he was responding to harsh criticism and not out of a last-minute crisis of conscience.
The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) criticism of Ma is hardly worth the attention given to it in the media because most ordinary people will be spending some time yet avoiding the party’s rhetoric altogether. No matter how well DPP Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) performs, there is no avoiding the wilderness effect of losing a presidential election when you don’t have control of the legislature.
Instead, it is the latest round of criticism from his own party’s legislators that is making Ma look increasingly wobbly.
Ma’s response has been to let the Presidential Office spokesperson cover for him. Big mistake.
If the spokesperson is to be believed, the president now believes that touring disaster-affected areas poses a risk to the Constitution, given that the premier is the executive’s traditional link man in delivering onsite relief.
We can only deduce that when presidents Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) toured disaster zones during their tenure that they also came perilously close to damaging the nation’s most important document.
So, instead of either participating in the races or touring the waterlogged south, Ma is doing neither.
There are a number of people patiently waiting to capitalize on such preposterous behavior. Chief among them is Ma’s party colleagues in the legislature, who have continued to exploit the youth of this government and targeted Ma personally to advance their agendas.
As an exercise in prioritizing images of authority, this nonsense over dragon boats and disaster zone tours is small change. But as a harbinger of conflict between the president and his own party on genuinely important affairs of state, all of this has currency.
The longer Ma neglects competent public relations work and allows his party to pillory him, the less confidence he will instill in people just trying to get by. And for as long as Taiwan is a democracy, it is these people, not smug party hacks, whose confidence he must retain.
In the meantime, Ma could do worse than draw up an agenda and stick to it, rather than capitulate every time his would-be allies start whining.
The cancelation this week of President William Lai’s (賴清德) state visit to Eswatini, after the Seychelles, Madagascar and Mauritius revoked overflight permits under Chinese pressure, is one more measure of Taiwan’s shrinking executive diplomatic space. Another channel that deserves attention keeps growing while the first contracts. For several years now, Taipei has been one of Europe’s busiest legislative destinations. Where presidents and foreign ministers cannot land, parliamentarians do — and they do it in rising numbers. The Italian parliament opened the year with its largest bipartisan delegation to Taiwan to date: six Italian deputies and one senator, drawn from six
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
Recently, Taipei’s streets have been plagued by the bizarre sight of rats running rampant and the city government’s countermeasures have devolved into an anti-intellectual farce. The Taipei Parks and Street Lights Office has attempted to eradicate rats by filling their burrows with polyurethane foam, seeming to believe that rats could not simply dig another path out. Meanwhile, as the nation’s capital slowly deteriorates into a rat hive, the Taipei Department of Environmental Protection has proudly pointed to the increase in the number of poisoned rats reported in February and March as a sign of success. When confronted with public concerns over young
China has long given assurances that it would not interfere in free access to the global commons. As one Ministry of Defense spokesperson put it in 2024, “the Chinese side always respects the freedom of navigation and overflight entitled to countries under international law.” Although these reassurances have always been disingenuous, China’s recent actions display a blatant disregard for these principles. Countries that care about civilian air safety should take note. In April, President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) canceled a planned trip to Eswatini for the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s coronation and the 58th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic
RSS