With President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) now more than 100 days into his presidency, various media organizations, starting with the magazine Global Views, published surveys measuring public satisfaction with his performance so far. The polls show that the public’s approval of Ma and his Cabinet, while no longer falling, remains rather low.
Ma boldly declared that temporary low ratings in opinion polls should not be too great a cause for concern and assured Taiwanese that “everything will be fine if you go along with me.”
Despite Ma’s confident tone, even his supporters in the pan-blue camp may be privately thinking that he is whistling in the dark. They are fully aware that, as Ma’s presidency neared the 100-day mark, it was former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) who was propping up Ma’s popularity. Were it not for the intentional leaks that exposed Chen’s alleged overseas money laundering and seriously damaged the prestige of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), support for Ma would probably still be falling.
At the start of Ma’s term, the two things about which his team felt most confident were the economy and cross-strait relations. No sooner did Ma take over the reins of the economy, however, than public confidence began to crumble. According to the latest survey by Global Views, public confidence in the economy now stands at a singularly unimpressive 31.9 percent, just 1.4 percent up on the low mark it hit in the previous poll.
But it is in the field of cross-strait relations that the real trouble lies. One month into Ma’s presidency, a survey done by the Cabinet itself put public confidence in its China policy at an unexpected high of 79.7 percent. Overjoyed with the survey result, Ma has redoubled his efforts on cross-strait policy over the past two months, seeking to improve on what were already good results and thereby make up for the poor marks he has been getting on the economy. His efforts have been counterproductive, however, as public confidence in his cross-strait policy has tumbled to 49.6 percent.
Since the two best cards in Ma’s hand have turned out to be useless, the governing team has ample cause for worry. The Cabinet has done a bit of self-scrutiny and come to the conclusion that, although it has plenty of good policies, it has not publicized them well enough.
The truth is that the Ma government’s problems arise not from having excellent policies and poor publicity, but because its policies are riddled with problems and have been heavily publicized. What with the US subprime mortgage crisis, global inflation and a slowdown in China’s economic growth, it was inevitable that Taiwan’s economy would slow down as well. Despite all this, Ma’s team confidently predicted the stock market would go up to 20,000 points, repeating the mantra until everyone believed it. Even DPP elder Shen Fu-hsiung (沈富雄) used all his savings to buy shares. Now that the TAIEX has taken a nosedive, those who thought they couldn’t go wrong by following Ma are licking their wounds, and their faith in his ability to handle the economy has inevitably taken a serious blow.
The same goes for cross-strait relations. The near 80 percent confidence Ma enjoyed one month into his presidency was not brought about by any amazing achievements. Rather, it was the public’s faith that nothing could go wrong as long as they followed Ma that filled them with confidence.
In the course of the past two months, however, the government’s pro-China slant has not produced any noticeable boost for the economy. In fact, it has allowed China to be all the more confident in its ability to take advantage of Taiwan.
Beijing took advantage of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung’s (吳伯雄) fondness for the grandiose, his vague position on Taiwan-China relations, and his naivete, both at the forum that was held by representatives of the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party and at the Olympic Games opening ceremony.
The usual way for a government to implement its policies is first to agree on the central idea, then assess the objective conditions before formulating actual policies, and only then to make those policies public. In the case of the Ma team, its central idea is vague and its assessment of objective conditions distorted. The result is that its policies tend to be little more than wishful thinking — the promise that the TAIEX stock index would rise to 20,000 points being a case in point. No wonder people are losing faith. Such problems can hardly be resolved by pep talks and publicity.
With no clear central idea to guide policy on the economy and cross-strait affairs, Ma’s Cabinet has no direction other than an undignified dependence on China.
This lack of ideological clarity also causes problems in political leadership. The KMT is organized along Leninist lines, whereas the five-power national Constitution is based on the thought of KMT founder Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙), while the mechanism for formulating and revising laws is a curious two-headed system even odder than the French one. While this system needs tightly organized European-style parties to function, what Ma would really like to see is separation of party and government, with loosely organized political parties, US style.
Ma does not have his own central idea, but he is asking everyone to follow him. His Cabinet’s policies offer no clear direction other than an unrealistic tendency to lean heavily toward China.
Their only answer to these problems is to get better publicity. No wonder this government finds itself bogged down in crisis.
Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
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