President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) won the Jan. 14 presidential election and is due to serve a second term in office. However, before his first term has even expired, his administration’s popularity is plunging as it draws fire from all directions for fumbling the twin issues of US beef with ractopamine residues and H5N2 avian influenza in Taiwanese poultry. Even Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Bao-ji (陳保基), who was a big gun for Ma during his election campaign, has been unable to steer clear of legal proceedings over these issues.
As a result, everyone can now see that the main methods that allowed Ma to wage such a confident and ultimately successful election campaign were unethical. His government team concealed the way it got the US to break with international convention and voice support for Ma’s campaign in return for a promise to do something about US beef imports, and it also covered up the spreading outbreak of highly pathogenic bird flu, giving the public a false sense of security.
The Ma administration’s problem is not just one of questionable ethics or of knowing how to campaign, but of not knowing how to govern. Accustomed as Ma’s team is to putting electoral considerations above everything else, it does not even know what governing means anymore. It is one thing for Ma to run a campaign based on polishing his image, concealing the facts, pretending that all is well and bending over backwards to please everybody, but, once elected and tasked with governing the country, he should take a different approach.
Any new policy a government pursues is bound to involve a redistribution of interests. Even though a good policy will bring benefits overall, those benefits will inevitably not be evenly distributed, and some people may even get hurt. What is needed then is not to sweep problems under the carpet, but to try and adopt policies that benefit as many people as possible, while compensating those who lose out. In so doing, the government must clearly explain the logic of its policies and their upsides and downsides. What it should not do is just hope it can get away with things. The way in which the process of Taiwan’s entry into the WTO in 2002 was handled is a good example of the right way to go about things.
Now that the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement between Taiwan and China has come into effect, most Taiwanese think the country should quickly progress toward an Asia-Pacific free-trade area, as well as pursuing free-trade agreements with other countries, including the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) with the US. People think these things are necessary if Taiwan is to avoid getting sucked ever deeper into China’s economy.
Signing an agreement with the US is the most important item, since it will otherwise be hard for Taiwan to avoid getting marginalized by the US-Korea Trade Agreement that came into force on March 15. Nevertheless, while successful TIFA talks with the US would make products in which Taiwan has an advantage more competitive in US markets, it cannot be denied that it would also bring more products for which the US has the advantage into Taiwan. For one thing, such an agreement can only be reached if it involves this kind of give and take, and for another, only under such conditions can a free-trade agreement effectively promote the transformation or further development of the industries of both the countries involved.
It follows that both Taiwan and the US will come under various kinds of pressure in the process of pursuing their interests in negotations. Indeed, the US is sure to put pressure on its negotiating partners. That is why Japan and South Korea, which are both much stronger than Taiwan in both foreign relations and economic terms, have made concessions over US beef. Given this reality, it is odd to hear Ma keep saying that he has not come under any pressure from the US in the course of negotiations.
If the US was not pressuring Taiwan, then of course there would be no need for Taiwan to make any concessions whatsoever, but it seems that Ma’s government has made one concession after another even without the US exerting any pressure on it to do so. No wonder popular resentment keeps mounting.
In an attempt to deflect this resentment, Ma is trying to put the blame on his predecessor, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). Ma says that the first person to formally agree to US demands for Taiwan to allow US beef imports was not himself, but Chen, in 2007. Ma also accuses the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of being inconsistent for having agreed to allow US beef imports when it was in government, but wanting to ban them now that it is in opposition. It is rather strange for Ma to make such a criticism, because of course the same could be said of Ma, only in the reverse order. If Ma really thinks he can get out of trouble by blaming Chen, then he had better apologize for having led the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in strenuously boycotting US beef imports when it was in opposition.
The US beef and bird flu issues both reveal Ma’s incompetence, as well as the most critical fault of his manner of governing, namely his tendency to apply electioneering tactics when forming and implementing government policy, such as pretending that everything is fine when it is not, covering up real problems and trying to please everyone at the same time.
From the US beef issue, one can also see how the Ma team changes its policy positions according to its status, taking a completely different stand now in government from the one it took in opposition. This is causing the public to increasingly lose faith in this government. Anxious civic groups and individuals are becoming increasingly radical and determined in their opposition to the government’s policy on US beef with ractopamine residues, and elected legislators and councilors, who are directly accountable to the public, are joining them in droves. While the DPP and the smaller New Party and Taiwan Solidarity Union attack government policy, only a handful of KMT lawmakers have been willing to stand up and publicly support Ma on this issue.
Of course, Ma and his government have none but themselves to blame for the pitiful situation in which they now find themselves, but unfortunately everyone else is suffering the consequences. Still, the opposition parties should also think about whether they, too, should gradually stop stressing elections above all else and putting electoral logic in place of policy logic, as well as their tendency to act very differently depending on whether they are in government or opposition. If they cannot change their ways, then Taiwan will be equally messed up no matter which party is in power.
Lin Cho-shui is a former DPP legislator.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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