I am not sure if it was divine justice, but Typhoon Morakot destroyed the President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) myth overnight, tearing his mask off so furiously that even children could see his true colors.
Indeed, many do not know how to describe Ma.
“This man,” as CNN called him, could be called a “shameless thief,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson called Napoleon III.
But why is Ma a shameless thief? He is against democracy, and helped blacklist activists such as Professor Chen Wen-chen (陳文成). Then he stepped on others to gain entrance to president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) circle of power. He opposed the lifting of martial law, the abolition of Article 100 of the Criminal Code and direct presidential elections. His anti-democratic philosophy remains unchanged.
Ironically, he easily stole the democracy that Taiwan earned through the sweat and blood of its people, and through this secured the presidency. He has opposed democracy all his life, yet now he enjoys the fruits of democracy paid for with other people’s lives. That sounds like a “shameless thief,” too.
Ma secured the biggest electoral power base since Taiwan democratized. He obtained almost 60 percent of the vote in the presidential election, more than Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) in 1996 and much more than Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) in 2000 and 2004. He also outshines his predecessors given that his Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) holds three-quarters of the legislature. With both the executive and legislative branches under his control, he secured the KMT chairmanship.
His mandate is far more legitimate than that of Chiang and his father, Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who both had supreme power.
Yet, after winning so many votes, Ma is handing Taiwan to China in a manner consistent with the “one China” principle, as if he were happy to be a local official.
While half of Taiwan almost drowned in the floods caused by Typhoon Morakot, the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) used the disaster to flirt with each other. Under the pretext of relief, the CCP’s Taiwan Affairs Office sent a document to KMT headquarters soon after the disaster struck, and Ma responded by refusing US and Japanese aid.
At a press conference after CNN’s opinion poll showed a majority of respondents wanted the president to step down, Ma responded to a reporter’s question on the cancelation of the purchase of 15 military helicopters by saying that Taiwan’s enemy was not necessarily the other side of the Taiwan Strait. So, as the flooding devastated Taiwan and ruined the homes of ordinary people, the KMT and CCP were using the situation to promote political interests.
By bestowing power on Ma, the public have given him the power to act recklessly. Fortunately, he has finally shown his true colors. After just 15 months in office, he has displayed incompetence and hypocrisy. It is only the first half of his term, but he is already a lame duck.
As New York Times reporter Andrew Jacobs wrote on Sunday: “But while the post-Morakot posturing makes for great political theater in Taiwan, the outside world is watching to see whether the episode will affect Mr. Ma’s efforts to bring Taiwan closer to China.”
Indeed, as the “Ma era” turns into the “post-Ma era,” can Beijing still place its hopes only on the pro-China president?
On Aug. 19, China donated 20 million yuan (US$2.9 million) to Non-Partisan Solidarity Union Legislator May Chin (高金素梅). The political significance of this is that Beijing is taking a new path. It is abandoning Ma and reaching into Taiwanese elections by sponsoring legislators directly.
Ma may now find it very challenging to put out the fire in his own backyard. One after another, pan-blue candidates in this year’s elections have started removing pictures of themselves and Ma because he is becoming a liability. More seriously, many are eager to have him removed. Even People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) has been mentioned as a possible replacement. Can Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) serve as a shield against such power struggles? We will have to wait and see.
Some pan-blue legislators have already held press conferences telling Ma to stop thinking about the 2012 presidential election.
The significant point here is the “veil of ignorance” that John Rawls wrote about. Those civil servants who try to curry favor with Ma, such as Judge Tsai Shou-hsun (蔡守訓) in Chen’s corruption trial, should consider their actions very carefully.
Chin Heng-wei is editor-in-chief of Contemporary Monthly.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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,
Taiwan aims to elevate its strategic position in supply chains by becoming an artificial intelligence (AI) hub for Nvidia Corp, providing everything from advanced chips and components to servers, in an attempt to edge out its closest rival in the region, South Korea. Taiwan’s importance in the AI ecosystem was clearly reflected in three major announcements Nvidia made during this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei. First, the US company’s number of partners in Taiwan would surge to 122 this year, from 34 last year, according to a slide shown during CEO Jensen Huang’s (黃仁勳) keynote speech on Monday last week.
When China passed its “Anti-Secession” Law in 2005, much of the democratic world saw it as yet another sign of Beijing’s authoritarianism, its contempt for international law and its aggressive posture toward Taiwan. Rightly so — on the surface. However, this move, often dismissed as a uniquely Chinese form of legal intimidation, echoes a legal and historical precedent rooted not in authoritarian tradition, but in US constitutional history. The Chinese “Anti-Secession” Law, a domestic statute threatening the use of force should Taiwan formally declare independence, is widely interpreted as an emblem of the Chinese Communist Party’s disregard for international norms. Critics