The US beef debacle has opened yet another door for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in its claim that the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration is incapable of good governance.
Following its poor handling of the devastation brought by Typhoon Morakot in August and safety concerns surrounding the swine flu vaccination program, the Cabinet’s decision to partially lift a longstanding ban on US beef imports — followed by its about-face amid growing opposition to the deal, which had been negotiated away from the public eye — has handed the DPP a political gift on a gold platter.
The inept handling of the beef issue has led many to question whether Ma has surrounded himself with officials who are either incapable of providing good advice on political matters, or who knew the unilateral decision would cause a fracas, but chose to proceed nonetheless. The first explanation points to ghastly incompetence in the Cabinet, while the latter hints at efforts by more conservative elements both within the administration and outside it — but still within the pan-blue camp — to throw a wrench in US-Taiwan relations and thereby consolidate Taiwan’s drift into the Chinese sphere of influence.
In either scenario, one government official stands out as the source of the political faux pas: National Security Council Secretary-General Su Chi (蘇起).
Asked for comment, Bruce Jacobs, professor of Asian Languages and Studies at Monash University in Australia, said: “Su is not very bright, [but] he is extraordinarily opportunistic. I wouldn’t look for too much rationality in [his handling of the beef issue], just incompetence.”
“He was hoping to solve the [US] arms issue and to get the Americans on side. In doing this [however], he ignored the earlier agreements in the Taiwan government regarding beef,” Jacobs said. “I talked to several senior Cabinet people just after Su completed his ‘negotiations’ and they were all quite visibly confused.”
A source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Taipei Times that many officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs “hate” Su and would like to see him out, adding that he has no clue about how to conduct foreign policy.
Ministry officials, the source said, were also angered by Su bypassing top Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and legislative officials throughout the process.
From the very beginning, Su, who fits more naturally in the conservative, or “old guard” of the KMT, was instrumental in the decision to lift the ban and, as the top official on strategic matters, should have warned Ma that the approach could backfire and end up harming relations with Washington.
If Su were to stand down over the controversy, such a development would be a major success for the DPP, principally because Su is situated in the deep-blue camp alongside, among others, the likes of former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜), both of whom showed their colors during the visit to Taichung last month of Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林).
All three, in fact, have made visits to Beijing in recent years and enjoy good relations with the Chinese Communist Party. The trio also ostensibly side with Beijing in the perception that Ma is proceeding too cautiously on cross-strait “reconciliation.”
As an elected official, Ma must take into account his ability to get re-elected in 2012, which compels him to take a somewhat cautious, middle-of-the-road approach to relations with Beijing. Anything more extreme, such as the hastier process favored by Lien, would render Ma unelectable.
There is no doubt, however, that Su, who does not appear to have aspirations for high office, represents a more conservative pressure on Ma through his channeling of deep-blue voices, which could force the president to act less cautiously than he should. The fact that Ma and Su have known each other for a long time — they attended the same high school and came through the China Youth Corps together — also implies that Su wields considerable influence on the president.
Criticizing the Ma administration on Wednesday, DPP spokeswoman Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) said that Ma, Su and Department of Health Minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) should step down to shoulder responsibility for the beef controversy.
Rather than aim at several targets at once, however, the DPP would be more likely to score a hit if it focused on one individual.
Given the signs that Yaung, as well as the Department of Health, were kept in the dark on the US beef policy shift, the DPP would waste energy trying to unseat him. The logical candidate to take the fall, then, is Su, whose council bypassed the Department of Health altogether.
Whether Ma yields or not, however, will depend on his assessment of Su’s utility in an administration that is already rife with disloyalty, said June Teufel Dreyer, professor at the University of Miami’s department of political science.
“Su is widely unpopular, but [he is] someone who has been loyal to Ma for a long time. From Ma’s point of view, he has a lot of old-line KMT types around him who aren’t very loyal,” Dreyer said.
“So as Ma weighs whether he’d be better off jettisoning the unpopular Su or keeping him, what do we imagine he is thinking?” she asked.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching