Following the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) trouncing in the nine-in-one elections last year, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) stepped down as chairman of the KMT and was replaced by New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫).
Ma thought he would be able to remain in control of the Cabinet and the legislature, but that hope was quickly extinguished as Chu ignored Ma’s September 2013 machinations when he tried to oust Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) from the party and the legislature. The attempt failed miserably from both a political and legal perspective, and now Chu has given Ma a public slap in the face by announcing that the party will not appeal the court’s decision to reinstate Wang’s party membership.
Although the Presidential Office has expressed its “strong disappointment and disagreement” and its dissatisfaction with the party leadership’s decision, there is nothing it can do to change the situation. Both in his capacity as former chairman of the party, and in his capacity as president, Ma has lost all influence over Chu.
In the case of former Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) deputy minister Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀), Ma’s confidant former MAC minister Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) accused Chang of leaking confidential information, and even of being a Chinese spy, but the prosecutors’ investigation ended in a decision not to prosecute Chang, which was followed by Wang’s decision to step down. Lately, information has been spreading that Ma wanted Chang to help arrange a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), as if to prove that there is nothing Ma wants more than a meeting with Xi, even if the venue would be downgraded from a meeting at the APEC summit — where the two would have met on equal terms — to a meeting on Kinmen within the “one China” framework.
While the idea of a meeting on Kinmen never got off the ground, it made people suddenly understand why Ma has ignored public opinion over the past few years, and why he made such a strong push for the signing of the cross-strait service trade agreement and talks over a trade in goods agreement. It also explains why he even tried to bring down Wang Jin-pyng when he felt the legislative speaker stood in the way of the service trade agreement.
Last year’s Sunflower movement ignited social opposition to the agreement and overturned Ma’s secret scheming, extinguishing all hope of the agreement passing through the legislature in the process. The vehemence of the anti-Chinese sentiment in Taiwan took China by surprise, and it became deeply disappointed in Ma’s performance. In the end, any hope of a meeting between Ma and Xi went up in smoke. The KMT’s landslide loss in last year’s nine-in-one elections sent a clear message that the party could no longer claim to represent the public, and the Greater China blueprint prepared by the pro-Chinese media disappeared like a mirage in the desert, as did the relationships that China had built with KMT politicians and politically influential businesspeople.
This series of events makes it clear that the Ma era has come crashing to an end. Although the KMT remains the ruling party in name, the party’s real political power is probably restricted to the central government. A new political framework is about to take shape. China, and other countries that want to observe or engage in exchanges with Taiwan, must abandon the old, outdated channels, which are not representative of public opinion and lack real power. Anyone who wants to understand what is going on in Taiwan should contact those who are really in power: the Democratic Progressive Party, independent Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and the many newly formed civic groups.
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