To avoid future confrontation, Hawang said Ma should communicate with the opposition before setting his cross-strait agenda, adding that she was disappointed by his rejection of Tsai’s request to discuss cross-strait policies and the sovereignty issue with him.
“His excuse was that ‘the election is over,’ but that only showed his arrogance,” she said. “He completely misses the meaning of a presidential mandate. That is the crux of the problem.”
Frank Liu (劉正山), a professor at National Sun Yat-sen University’s Institute of Political Science, concurred.
Liu said it was difficult to interpret why voters support a particular candidate. Ma, however, seemed to be convinced that all 7 million who voted for him supported his cross-strait policy and therefore reached the conclusion that he did not need to pay attention to what the opposition thought.
While it requires a great deal of political skill to resolve differences with the opposition, Liu said, Ma has turned a deaf ear to their concerns and pressed ahead with the Chiang-Chen meeting. The result was to be expected — a backlash, he said. In addition to holding talks with the opposition, Liu said, Ma owed the public an explanation as to why he could shake hands with representatives from Beijing and how he handled thorny issues that were irreconcilable under the DPP administration.
“He must tell the public whether there are any secret deals involved,” Liu said. “It is dangerous for Ma to take all the credit for what he thinks is a cross-strait breakthrough [when] what he has actually received in return is just a small favor by Beijing.”
Liu urged Ma to minimize the role the KMT plays in cross-strait negotiations and let the two quasi-official agencies do their job.
“No country in the world has a political party representing the government at the negotiating table,” Liu said. “It is very dangerous to let the KMT and Chinese Communist Party set the cross-strait agenda.”
Although former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) has proposed abolishing the SEF and replacing unofficial negotiations with government-to-government exchanges, Liu said the SEF was a “necessary evil” at the moment.
Commenting on Thursday’s demonstration, Liu said protests were a norm in a democracy, but that it was a pity that violent clashes between protesters and police had sabotaged the image of the DPP and eclipsed the message the party wanted to get across.
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