Ten days after stepping down, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) filed an application with the Presidential Office to travel to Hong Kong to deliver an address at the Society of Publishers in Asia’s (SOPA) 2016 Awards for Editorial Excellence.
The Presidential Office rejected the application and suggested that Ma deliver the address via video link.
Unhappy at the decision, Ma’s office said the decision hurt the nation’s freedom and democracy.
At first glance, this seems a matter of administrative regulations, but it is in fact a political battle between the incumbent and the previous administration resulting from a lack of trust between the government and the opposition.
And this is just the beginning.
Ma’s application was governed by rules issued by his own administration to address the rights of a former president to travel abroad after stepping down. According to these regulations, it would be sufficient to file an application 15 days before the expected departure. This is only an administrative order, and one that Ma himself made at that. In the end, it is the current administration that decides whether to approve such an application.
President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration based its decision on Article 26 of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), which states that a person who is retired from or has left a position with the authority to handle or transfer national secrets will, for a period of three years after leaving that position, only be allowed to leave the country after obtaining approval. Ma’s visit falls within that time limit, and he has handled large volumes of secret information. The rejection is thus founded on the law, and the situation differs from when former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) traveled abroad after stepping down, as the law did not exist at that time.
Ma’s SOPA address is to deal with his views on cross-strait relations and the situation in East Asia, which implies that it is not an urgent matter, and that the whole issue was more about going to Hong Kong for the sake of going to Hong Kong. Had Ma chosen to wait a while after stepping down to travel, perhaps the controversy would not have been so fierce, but he deliberately chose to visit just after Tsai took office. It is not surprising, then, that his decision has been seen as an extension of his extended travels prior to stepping down, which appeared to be designed to force people to take notice of him, in complete disregard of any controversy that might be initiated by his travels. That he continues to try to make his presence felt by visiting Hong Kong seems to be an attempt to create problems for the Tsai administration.
Before stepping down, Ma joined the Chinese government in repeatedly stressing the importance of the so-called “1992 consensus.” Beijing then unilaterally severed official exchanges with Taiwan, because Tsai did not acknowledge the “consensus” in her inaugural address. If Ma were now to travel to Hong Kong, a highly sensitive location due to its “one country, two systems” policy, and if he were to continue to promote the “one China” principle and the “1992 consensus” — both of which have been soundly rejected by Taiwanese — that would perhaps be indicative of the political freedom and freedom of expression that Taiwan enjoys, but it would also make the current administration look bad and make it seem as if Taiwan’s leadership were divided.
Ma is in a rush to build a political platform for his life as a former president. Former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) no longer has any influence over relations with China, Hong Kong or Macau, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is not what it used to be. Ma is trying to fill this vacuum, but in his eagerness, he has alerted the Tsai administration to his plans. The government does not want to be restricted by Ma’s activities, and so rejected his application, handing him a defeat in the first skirmish in this political battle.
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