A think tank awarded President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) a failing grade yesterday, citing weak leadership and poor government management as major weaknesses.
Luo Chih-cheng (羅致政), chief executive of Taiwan Brain Trust founded by former presidential adviser Koo Kwang-ming (辜寬敏), said that although Thursday will mark the second anniversary of Ma’s inauguration, he has failed in too many areas to count, including politics, democracy, the economy, human rights, international relations and cross-strait ties.
“If he still doesn’t know where the problems are, he will get the same result next time around no matter how many times he changes the Cabinet line-up,” Luo said.
He was talking at a forum organized by the Taiwan Brain Trust to review the performance of the Ma administration.
Luo, who is a political science professor at Soochow University, said Ma’s two biggest problems have been weak leadership and poor governance.
Ma might make a decent leader during a time of peace, but he was incapable of handling a country constantly facing challenges like Taiwan, Luo said.
Ma also has a tendency to take credit for success while refusing to take responsibility when things go wrong, he said.
Although the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government likes to boast about its experience of government, Luo said that experience came from running a country under authoritarian one-party rule.
“In the 3G age, the KMT is operating with a 2G mind ... Its decision-making process is opaque and made by one party and one person only,” Luo said.
Another panalist, Kenneth Lin (林向愷), a professor of economics at National Taiwan University, presented a paper titled “Sum of all fears: an overall examination of the Ma administration’s two years in office.”
In the paper, Lin said Ma’s erroneous economic policies have undermined the structure of Taiwan’s future economic development.
Such policies have depleted the treasury, increasing the financial deficit and its ratio to GDP to all-time highs, Lin said.
Outstanding public debt is now 45 percent of GDP, but the minister of finance continues to brag that the country’s finances are the best in the world, Lin said.
What is more worrying is the extent to which the Ma administration is pinning all its hopes on China and a belief that the economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) it plans to sign with Beijing will fix the country’s fiscal plight, he said.
Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), former representative to the US under the Democratic Progressive Party government, said that the Ma administration’s cross-strait and foreign policies have raised doubts about its resolve to protect the country’s sovereignty.
It is wishful thinking to rely on China’s goodwill, which is at best uncertain, Wu said.
At the same time, although Japan and the US should remain the country’s most important allies, they have become marginalized, he said.
“I have a new ‘four nots and one without’ for Ma’s cross-strait and foreign policies ... That is they are not modest, not mature, not serious. Since they did not pass the test, there will not be a next time,” Wu said.
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