It is almost a year since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) assumed office. His policies have been unimaginative, with nostalgia and increasing economic reliance on China emerging as main themes. Worringly, symbolic reminders of authoritarian rule are surfacing as the economy continues to sink. And although Ma won 58 percent of the vote last year, a recent Global View magazine poll showed that 58 percent of respondents were unhappy with his performance.
To a limited extent, late president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) set Taiwan on the path to democracy after decades of strongarm government and myriad rights abuses. Now, with the retirement of most of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) old guard, Ma is trying to boost his minor connection to Chiang by expanding activities commemorating the late president’s birthday — he would have been 100 this year. Ma has even taken to showing off an old photo of himself when he was Chiang’s English interpreter.
Although the KMT has complete control of the government, party cohesion has suffered from various centers of power — the Presidential Office, the Cabinet, the legislature and KMT headquarters — following different political agendas.
But Ma’s pledge to crack down on corruption has spurred the executive and judicial branches into action, catching leading KMT figures off guard and consolidating Ma’s authority.
On Friday the legislature approved the Cabinet’s NT$149.1 billion (US$4.4 billion) special budget to stimulate the economy and expand public construction. Ma brought together Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄), Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and KMT Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) for an unprecedented joint press conference in a show of KMT unity and political will, as well as to demonstrate Ma’s authority over the government, the legislature and his party.
The KMT’s relations with the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), on the other hand, are icy. This week, Presidential Office Secretary-General Chan Chuen-po (詹春柏) visited the DPP legislative caucus and invited DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to Chiang’s birthday celebrations.
For Tsai, commemorating Chiang in this way would have amounted to thumbing her nose at the DPP’s human rights agenda, given the persecution that took place under Chiang and his father. As expected, she turned down the invitation.
DPP legislative caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) responded by inviting Ma to the opposition’s second people’s conference on national affairs — then making seven demands of the government. As expected, Ma’s office rejected Ker’s invitation.
Tsai said that because Ma twice rejected invitations to the opposition’s national affairs conferences, the DPP would proceed with a major anti-government demonstration on May 17. So, once again, the government and the opposition are in deadlock amid this charade. Each places conditions on the very act of negotiating that the other cannot accept.
The public is increasingly concerned about the direction this government is taking. Calls for talks between the government and the opposition are growing louder. Ma and Tsai should acknowledge the gap that exists between government policy and public opinion, put aside petty politics and sit down to talk.
If they cannot bring themselves to do this, the blue-green division that has beset governance in this country will continue to be a source of national harm as much as electoral energy.
Ma cannot afford to be a president of one half — or less — of the country indefinitely, and Tsai cannot afford to offer an identical alternative.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and