Two-and-a-half years have passed since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) changed the name of the cross-strait trade and finance agreement, which was still on the drawing board at that time, from Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement to Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA). Ever since then, the Ma administration has insisted that the ECFA is a purely economic agreement and does not involve any matters of sovereignty or politics. That was Ma’s rationale for not submitting the ECFA to a referendum — and the government turned down proposals signed by members of the public for a referendum on the ECFA four times.
Government officials and departments, including the Mainland Affairs Council, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the premier, the Presidential Office and others, have repeated the same narrative on innumerable occasions.
Following Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) refusal to recognize the existence of the so-called “1992 consensus,” Ma and his officials have changed their story. Now they say that it was only because the “1992 consensus” already existed as a basis — that is, a precondition — that Taiwan and China were able to sign the ECFA.
However, there is a clear contradiction between the two narratives. First, the government said the ECFA was a purely economic agreement and did not involve any political aspects, but now it is telling us that the ECFA was signed on the basis of the thoroughly political “1992 consensus.” This change of tack has stirred up quite a storm.
Was the Ma administration fooling the Taiwanese public with the story it told before the ECFA was signed last year, or is it the current version that is meant to pull the wool over people’s eyes?
The legislators who deliberated the draft agreement last year are still in their posts. So it is their responsibility to help clear the doubts from people’s minds by giving the public a proper explanation.
When they were inspecting, discussing and interpreting the text of the ECFA last year, did they realize that the ECFA depended on the “1992 consensus”? Did they exercise their power of consent as legislators based on such an understanding?
Considering the importance of the “1992 consensus” as a political condition, if the Taiwanese and Chinese governments held any form of negotiation beforehand, and if they agreed to take the “consensus” as the political basis for the signing of the ECFA, then the Ma administration is all the more obliged to show us a written agreement to that effect — one officially signed by both sides. That would help to dispel the controversy and it would demonstrate the government’s responsible attitude.
They must be disabused of the belief that it is enough to talk about such an agreement without presenting any proof, and then expect the public to accept a notion that appeared out of thin air and carries significant political risk for Taiwan.
If the government is unable to produce an officially signed document, then, given that the governments on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are unchanged, there should still be time for them to sign a retroactive agreement, though any such agreement would still have to be sent to the legislature for deliberation and retroactive approval. Ma’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) still has over half the seats in the legislature, so he should have nothing to worry about. Then the agreement could be officially incorporated into the ECFA.
Of course, no matter who forms the next government, they are likely to face a new wave of calls for an ECFA referendum, this time focused on the issue of its basis — namely the so-called “1992 consensus.”
Li Ching-lieh is a professor of electrical engineering at Tamkang University.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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