President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday pressed Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to elucidate the “status quo” she said she wishes to maintain, saying a presidential candidate cannot be unrealistic and elusive on the matter.
Speaking at a Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) exhibition on the history of cross-strait exchanges, Ma took issue with the DPP and Tsai in the wake of DPP accusations that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu’s (朱立倫) recent visit to China and his policy have catered to Beijing.
Ma said that former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) “one side, one country” tenet exacerbated cross-strait tensions and harmed the mutual trust between Taiwan and the US, adding that “the cross-strait ‘status quo’ we have now is peaceful and prosperous development.”
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
“Tsai said she wants the ‘status quo’ to be maintained, but everyone knows that the public wants the ‘status quo’ to be maintained, as it has more than 70 percent of support in the poll. The question is which ‘status quo’ does the public want? The one we have now? Or the one we had seven years ago?” Ma said.
Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) had signed a meeting document in 1992 — which is on display in the exhibition — that endorsed the view that “there is one China with each side having its own interpretation of what China means,” or the so-called “1992 consensus,” Ma said.
“Tsai also stated at a legislative question-and-answer session in 2000 as then-Mainland Affairs Council head that each of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait has its own interpretation for the ‘one China’ controversy,” he said.
In related news, the KMT caucus said that while Chu has stuck to the “1992 consensus,” Tsai is “pursuing a ‘one China’ in the future.”
KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) said he had found news reports dated August 2000 that reported then-MAC leader Tsai as saying that due to the affinity in culture and economics between Taiwan and China, “there is only one option for the Taiwanese people in the future, which is ‘one China in the future,’ or constructing a meaningful political relationship with the mainland in the next five to 10 years.”
Tsai should “apologize to those strongly advocating Taiwan’s formal independence in the DPP, to former president Chen’s ‘one side, one country’ tenet and to the DPP’s ‘Resolution on Taiwan’s Future,’” Wu said.
Meanwhile, DPP spokesperson Wang Min-sheng (王閔生) said the party has already clearly explained its cross-strait policy, and urged the KMT to stop manipulating the cross-strait issue for election gains.
“What [the DPP] means by ‘maintaining the status quo’ refers to maintaining the peaceful and stable development of relations across the Taiwan Strait. We have clarified it on various occasions before and the stance has received support from more than 70 percent of the public,” Wang told a brief afternoon news conference at the party’s headquarters in Taipei.
“We would like to urge the KMT to seriously face doubts from the public, respond positively to them and stop avoiding answering questions from the public,” Wang added.
Wang said that he felt sorry for a political party and a president who have been in power for seven years and “only play the cross-strait card day after day” because they do not have any accomplishments to show; they are no longer able to claim that they are “clean” and they are no longer a united party.
“Cross-strait relations is an important issue for the country; it should not become a topic or tool for political manipulation for election gains,” Wang said. “The KMT should stop doing such a thing that is not benefiting the nation and could be harmful to the public.”
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