The days of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) control of indoctrination, propaganda and the media are long gone, but that does not mean that the KMT does not keep influencing Taiwanese voters. Witness Taiwan’s last presidential election, where many sheep-like voters were led to believe that Taiwan’s main problem was its economy and that former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was solely responsible for holding it back.
Some call this response a case of Stockholm Syndrome exhibited through a misguided loyalty resulting from Taiwanese being held hostage for 50 years by KMT one-party rule and indoctrination. Another and simpler explanation is that voters simply failed to do their homework.
At election time, the constant refrain and mantra in Taiwan was: “Our economy is so bad, we need a change.” In reality, with a growth rate of more than 5 percent, Taiwan’s economy was doing much better compared with many other places — and this is where voters first failed at doing their homework. So it was easy for them to be set up by the KMT’s ace flimflam man, Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who convinced them to vote for him. Ma promised he would lead Taiwan to catch up with or come closer to the inflated numbers of the People’s Republic of China.
Ma was elected and the corner was supposedly turned. Taiwan was well on its way to the Promised Land. Unfortunately, the TAIEX and economy are immune to flimflam and the economy nosedived. Some began to see the light, but others still listened to the flimflam man. The argument now changed. Before the election, even though the world economy was bad and Taiwan’s economy was fair, it was not a global problem; it was Chen’s fault. When, after the election, Taiwan suddenly discovered that the world economy had been bad all along and when Taiwan’s economy became worse, this was not Ma’s fault, it was a global problem. Logic? No, but that also is not a strong point of many Taiwanese voters.
There were some who sought to defend their choice to vote for Ma; they countered that the real election issue was corruption in Chen’s family, corruption that seemed to be a problem that only afflicted the Democratic Progressive Party. Ma, after all, had been acquitted of corruption. But wait; let’s go back to logic again. After appeals, Ma’s secretary was thrown into jail for misuse of state funds, but it was Ma’s bank account that had increased by more than half a million US dollars.
Wouldn’t one think that the Harvard-educated Ma would ask where that extra half a million in his account came from? Is that not logical?
Further, why would Ma’s secretary go out of his way to cheat people out of half a million dollars and put it in Ma’s bank account? Is that logical? Is it devotion? Or is it simply taking the fall? Still, for Ma’s staunch supporters, the flimflam man was pure as snow.
Let us return to Taiwan’s tanking economy. The ball remains in Ma’s court, so what is he doing? Desperate times call for desperate measures. However, it is not Taiwan’s economy that is really most desperate right now.
What is desperate is Ma’s reputation. His 6-3-3 campaign promise has for all practical purposes been jettisoned barely a month after election. Politicians are generally not expected to be held totally accountable for everything they promise before elections, but bailing out after one month is a bit too soon. This has left Ma with only one card left in his hand: to stake everything on direct links and tourists from China — and do it fast. So with little forethought and hardly a glance at the big picture, Ma has plunged ahead and ignored the risks to the people, the nation and the economy.
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