As campaigning for the local elections reaches fever pitch, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) decided to make his own pitch, reinterpreting the “three noes” policy of “no discussion of unification, no independence and no use of military force” he adhered to during his term in office as “no exclusion of the possibility of unification, no independence and no use of force.”
He made no attempt at concealing this, it was not said on the spur of the moment, neither was it as simple as Ma having become more pro-unification.
Those familiar with the situation know that Ma’s “China dream” has never changed and that it is something he inherited from his late father’s wish to see eventual unification.
It is clear that Ma’s original “three noes” were campaign promises to secure the presidency, a trick to obtain power. It is a shame so many fell for it, for they gave him the chance to work with China to move toward unification without a single shot being fired.
In office, Ma was in too much of a rush to cozy up to China and too clumsy in his choices, showing his true colors with his preoccupation with meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and pushing through the cross-strait service trade agreement.
It was only after Taiwanese youth pushed back and turned public opinion against the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), costing the party the 2016 elections, that the KMT realized that Ma and his followers were bad news.
With this came the realization that it would need a new spokesperson for China.
Ma could not put aside his lifelong obsession with unification. The string of lawsuits that have plagued him since he left office were a far cry from the cut and thrust of power, and he longed to once more command the attention of “Emperor Xi.”
Time waits for no one: It seems the baton has been passed to Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲).
Ko has been making all the right noises, starting with his suggestion that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are “one family,” and has got the Chinese state media, together with the pro-China media and political factions in Taiwan, fully behind him.
Poor Ma; Ko has been crowned the new spokesman for China. Seeing Ko basking in this praise, KMT Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) has jumped into the fray, saying that China is the key to Kaohsiung’s prosperity in the hope that Bejing will look lovingly upon him and bequeath him the spokesmanship.
Han is a more natural choice, being bluer-blooded than Ko, and China’s Internet army has gone barmy for him. Again, poor Ma. His dreams of meeting Xi again are rapidly fading.
Ma, anxious as ants in a frying pan, needed to do something desperate if he was to stop Ko or Han from replacing him. If they were trying to muscle in on his communist friends, why could he not muscle in on their campaigns?
None of this happened by chance. This month’s local elections, whether it be for Taipei, Kaohsiung or the whole of Taiwan, is clearly no longer a fight between the pan-green and pan-blue camps of yesteryear, nor is it a simple three-way contest between greens, blues and independent mavericks.
This time, it is a struggle between a blue-independent coalition, aided and abetted by the Chinese, against the green camp, and between China’s totalitarianism and Taiwanese values.
If the Democratic Progressive Party loses Taipei and Kaohsiung, it is a harbinger of losing the whole of Taiwan in 2020.
Hopefully, Taiwanese will make the right choice.
Lau Yi-te is chairman of the Taiwan Solidarity Union.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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