What world does President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) live in? After Typhoon Morakot, it is a world of images — images past and images present. It is a world of imaginary images that have been built on, fostered and fashioned by years of faulty Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) paradigms and reinforced by their propaganda.
In the mind of Ma, his party and his spin-masters, image has always trumped performance. Taiwanese are finally realizing this and realizing that regardless of his words, Ma has no idea what it is to be Taiwanese.
Ma grew up on images of Chinese grandeur. As his parents’ only son, his family’s hopes were pinned on him; in the eyes of his four doting sisters, he could do no wrong; he was cast in the image of family hero.
His family ranked high in the KMT, a party of colonial outsiders who imagined that it was their destiny to save the inferior Taiwanese.
The KMT, too, could do no wrong. Disregarding why they lost the war against the communists and forced to flee China, the KMT educated Ma to fit with the image of a glorious one-party state that would one day return as heroes to China.
But images are only images. Sooner or later, everyone must face reality. For Ma and the people of Taiwan, Typhoon Morakot hastened this.
The foreign media had previously been kind to Ma, fostering his image as a “Harvard-educated lawyer,” even though he never passed the bar exam in either the US or Taiwan.
Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Ma’s rival for the presidency, Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), did pass the bar exam in Taiwan, but the foreign media has never touted their legal backgrounds. Ma surely felt he had the advantage.
Likewise, countries like the US and others portray Ma as a statesman, leader and peacemaker in the Taiwan Strait. It is an image with little substance: Ma has done little to earn it except acquiesce to Chinese demands and downplay Taiwan’s identity and sovereignty.
This image of Ma suits the agendas of those countries and their economies and so has their support.
Even Ma has bought into this idea of himself, coming to believe that he is a statesman and peacemaker. That fits with his image of himself: He can do no wrong.
Then came Typhoon Morakot and its unprecedented floods. The destruction is not an image but reality and has tested Ma’s leadership.
As Taiwan struggles to recover from Morakot, the public is seeing a different man in Ma. When action was needed, Ma offered hesitation. Foremost in his mind, it seemed, was not the devastation in the south but rather how to protect his image with China and the world.
What effect would it have on his image in China as a peacemaker in favor of unification if he accepted help from other countries?
Ma is struggling to preserve his image as a leader. It is a tough struggle when everything points to faulty, ill-prepared and ill-coordinated government rescue efforts.
As commander-in-chief, Ma bears responsibility for this, and he knew that he would have to shoulder that responsibility sooner or later.
Yet it is clear from comments he has made to media that his idea of shouldering responsibility is finding someone else to blame — someone that can take the fall for him and protect his image.
This strategy worked when Ma was accused of corruption and mishandling funds. His secretary served time in jail for depositing nearly US$500,000 in Ma’s bank account.
Despite this, local and foreign media preserved his image as squeaky clean.
But there are other, deeper struggles. Ma is struggling to identify with and empathize with the public.
He spoke of the victims in terms of “they” and not “we” after the typhoon struck: They should have gotten out of the way; they should have had foresight.
But this time, the public is not buying Ma’s talk. They have lost too much and suffered too much and will not tolerate being labeled as fools who should have gotten out of the way of Morakot.
The survivors of Morakot know who helped them and who didn’t and how long it took before help arrived. The public has finally come face to face with the real Ma, not the image of the man they had chosen for president.
Jerome Keating is a writer based in Taipei.
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
On May 13, the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment to Article 6 of the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) that would extend the life of nuclear reactors from 40 to 60 years, thereby providing a legal basis for the extension or reactivation of nuclear power plants. On May 20, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislators used their numerical advantage to pass the TPP caucus’ proposal for a public referendum that would determine whether the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant should resume operations, provided it is deemed safe by the authorities. The Central Election Commission (CEC) has
RSS