As expected, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) won the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) chairmanship election last Sunday — after all, he was the only candidate. Nevertheless, Taoyuan County Council Speaker Tseng Chung-yi (曾忠義) of the KMT has voiced suspicion that the number of voters may have been inflated. The party now owes its members and the public at large an explanation. If the allegation turns out to be true, it would be ample evidence that all that “Teflon Man” Ma has been saying is but empty words. However, it is easy to imagine that the party will blindly keep following wherever he goes.
Ma’s candidacy and election as chairman once again highlights his credibility problem. After the election, he said he only wanted the chairmanship to be able better to execute his presidential duties. He acknowledged that he had said he would not double as chairman before he was elected president, but said the sudden and sharp change in the economic situation and growing unemployment meant that the current situation differed sharply from the situation prior to the presidential election, and that he had never intended to deceive anyone.
However, the worsening economic situation and the difficulties people have making ends meet are the result of Ma’s inability to govern. Over the past year, he has led deregulation and opening up toward China, further weakening Taiwan’s economy to the point where it has had difficulty withstanding the impact of the global financial crisis.
The way to deal with flawed policies that have a negative impact on political results is to correct those policies, so what would be the use of doubling as chairman if Ma were unable to do so? What will he do if doubling as party chairman does nothing to help him improve the situation? Implement an imperial system to be able to really and truly “get a complete hold on power and take complete responsibility”? Should Ma fail to reverse the policies that have brought harm to both the country and the public over the past year, we can only assume that the reason he ignored his promise not to double as chairman is that he wants to expand his power and use the party apparatus to gain control over the KMT’s legislative majority and speed up the move toward “eventual unification.” Such political manipulation will turn the KMT and the Republic of China into Ma’s tools for bringing about unification and making him the hero of the nation.
Maybe Ma’s perennial arrogance toward members of the public and the KMT stems from a feeling that he sits at the top of all “high class Mainlanders” and is the most outstanding among a superior group of people. However, when dealing with the People’s Republic of China — and the leader of its one party dictatorship Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) — Ma suddenly becomes exceedingly modest and polite. After receiving Hu’s congratulatory telegram addressed to “Mr Ma Ying-jeou,” Ma replied using many polite and deferential phrases. Looking at this exchange as a study in political rhetoric, Hu is the elevated leader and Ma the lowly servant, clearly highlighting the relationship between a suzerain and its vassal state.
Not only that — until he has officially taken up the chairmanship, Ma cannot call himself party chairman, but he also can’t use his presidential title in his dealings with China. This makes him an odd character without a title to his name, a simple commoner under Chinese rule. In addition, in the date of his reply to Hu, Ma gave the year as “98.” We all know that China uses the common era system, while Taiwan uses the Republican era system. Although Ma wrote “98,” he didn’t dare write “year 98 of the Republic” (民國98年). The KMT spokesperson tried to clarify the matter by saying that “98 is 98. Everyone knows that it means ‘year 98 of the Republic.’” That of course begs the question if “92” in the so-called “1992 consensus” — called simply the “92 consensus” in Chinese — means “year 92 of the Republic”? Of course not. It means 1992, which is year 81 of the Republic. But then, the “92 consensus” is also the product of much kowtowing to China; small wonder the KMT so happily abandons its Republican era system.
Ma will not be able to save the economy by combining the presidency with the KMT chairmanship. On the contrary, he will push the government’s flawed policies to the extreme, pushing unemployment first above 6 percent and then higher still, until people’s livelihoods are destroyed and the standard of living falls to the same level as China’s, all but paving the way for a Chinese takeover.
Ma’s policy changes over the last year have prioritized cross-strait relations and fawned on the Chinese leadership while neglecting the Taiwanese public. This has repeatedly showed us that in combining the presidency and the KMT chairmanship, Ma will lock his sights on China, making it impossible for Taiwan to turn adversity into victory. In other words, the day Ma was elected chairman of the KMT was the day Taiwan’s problems took a turn for the worse.
TRANSLATED BY PERRY SVENSSON
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