Will Hu Wei-jen (胡為真) provide new leadership in the National Security Council? His record looks doubtful. Hu obtained his doctorate from the University of Pretoria in 1988, when South Africa was still very much under apartheid rule. As a diplomat, he was happy to accept the Chen administration’s appointment as representative to Germany in 2001 and again to Singapore in 2005. Strangely, it was only in 2007 that he resigned to complain about “de-Sinification.”
After stunning electoral success in 2008 in the legislative and presidential elections, the KMT under Ma has declined spectacularly. In continuing to appoint such figures from the former dictatorships of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) such as former premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) and Su as well as Hu, Ma works with people for whom he feels an affinity.
But in doing so, he is forgetting his robust attempt to project an image of strong Taiwanese identity during his 2008 presidential campaign.
If Ma wishes to be more than a failed one-term president, he must reinvigorate his government’s Taiwanese identity and give such people as Wu and Vice-Premier Eric Chu (朱立倫) a greater ability to look after the country’s genuine interests.
Bruce Jacobs is professor of Asian Languages and Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
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