President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has not decided whether to attend a live-fire military drill later this month, the Presidential Office said yesterday.
Spokesman Wang Yu-chih (王郁琦) yesterday said he did not know whether Ma would participate in the annual exercise, code-named Han Kuang, scheduled to be held between Sept. 22 and Sept. 26.
Ma presided over the computer-simulated first stage of the drill back in June. It was the first annual Han Kuang exercise since Ma took office.
The computerized warfare simulation broke from the past focus on air, sea and land defense drills, focusing instead on ground combat, with battles in the north of the country and diversionary combat in central and southern Taiwan.
The second-stage, live-fire military drill is to be held later this month. The military is expected to mobilize 30,000 reserves to participate in the exercise. The large-scale military drill will include the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines, with the focus on ground combat and urban warfare.
The Ministry of National Defense has said it would not televise any part of the drill as Ma’s predecessors did. Nor would the ministry invite reporters or other guests to observe the drill, which the ministry said was to save energy in line with government policy.
The ministry has rebutted speculation that this year’s low-profile approach is designed to avoid tensions with China as the government seeks to improve cross-strait relations.
Antonio Hsiang (向駿), a research fellow at the Society for Strategic Studies, said that considering the thaw in relations with China, the efforts to keep this year’s Han Kuang exercise low-key were not surprising.
“As military strategy must correspond to national policy, the military has no say in this regard, as it is part of the overall game plan,” he said.
While the military strategy of the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was to deter the enemy in the Taiwan Strait and launch preemptive strikes, Hsiang said the focus on urban warfare this year indicated a shift in military strategy to more defensive training, which Ma has repeatedly advocated.
Meanwhile, Wang said late on Saturday that the government would step up communications with the opposition camp on various policies and public issues.
Wang made the remarks after tens of thousands of people marched in Taipei earlier the same day to protest what they called Ma’s embrace of China and the failure of his administration to improve the economy.
Acknowledging the right to demonstrate and freedom of assembly, Wang said the government would increase dialogue with grassroots groups and opposition parties, solicit their opinions on policies and seek their understanding and support for major initiatives.
Wang also said the Cabinet’s major policies were on the right track. The government will work even harder to live up to the high expectations of the public and adopt innovative measures to cope with the global economic situation and revamp the economy, he said.
The protest was the first major rally targeting Ma’s administration since he took office 100 days ago. Demonstrators marched through Taipei from two points and met up on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office to call for “sunshine bills” to ensure clean politics and other changes.
The rally, organized by the pro-independence Taiwan Society, ended in the evening without incident.
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