There is nothing unusual about holding official celebrations when a president is inaugurated, but as President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) starts his second term in office, most people feel that there is little to celebrate.
Even members of Ma’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) are feeling ill at ease. Two weeks ago, the government originally planned to invite large numbers of party officials and supporters to a state banquet on Saturday, the eve of Ma’s inauguration, but the party was suddenly called off. Instead, the big event on Saturday was an anti-Ma protest organized by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and its allies in the pan-green camp.
The notion of a lame-duck president originates from the US. Originally the phrase referred to the final days of a president’s second term in office, when the ruling and opposition parties have finished their primary elections and decided which presidential and vice presidential candidates to put forward. At such a time, public attention turns to the newly nominated candidates and their views and attitudes regarding important domestic and foreign policies, and many people start betting on the next president instead of the sitting one.
Even though the current president still retains his legally defined powers, his influence is considerably diminished. That is what a lame-duck president is generally taken to mean.
Ma’s case is a little different. Well before the end of his first term, an almost indiscernible palace coup was already brewing within the ranks of the KMT.
Certain KMT lawmakers enabled a DPP draft amendment calling for zero tolerance of leanness-enhancing agents in meat to pass in a legislative committee, defeating the Cabinet’s proposal to set “safe limits” for these drugs. Key figures in the KMT legislative caucus have also taken the lead in blocking a Cabinet proposal to introduce a capital gains tax on securities transactions. These are significant actions, and they look a lot like an attempt to overrule the Cabinet. In other countries, presidents become lame ducks at the end of their second terms, but Ma was limping even before the end of his first.
Let us briefly review how Ma has handled the three issues that have dragged his prestige down to rock bottom — US beef imports, increases in fuel and electricity prices and the capital gains tax.
While campaigning for January’s elections, Ma made a vague promise to the US that Taiwan would allow imports of ractopamine-treated US beef, but he was forced to shelve that pledge after he was re-elected. Ma could not or would not explain what kind of pressures his government was under, or the advantages and disadvantages of giving in to those pressures. Only when he could hold out no longer did he come up with a contradictory position, saying he hoped the Cabinet’s version of the law would be passed, but urging the public not to eat ractopamine-treated meat. He has been ducking and weaving all the way.
Before the presidential and legislative elections, Ma’s government held down fuel and electricity prices, but he changed his tune once the elections were over. On the one hand, he cannot let Taiwan Power Co go on making huge losses, but on the other he has failed to come up with a plan to run the company more efficiently. At first, he boldly announced that the price of electricity would be raised as far as it needed to go all at once, but later, and just as boldly, he said that it would instead be raised in three installments.
As to the capital gains tax, at first Ma went on about how the proposed levy fitted in with the principle that people should be taxed according to their ability to pay, but later, when the pressure was turned up, he started dodging the issue. Not until officials from his own party’s caucus spoke out against the proposed tax, giving his prestige another knock, did he try to put out the fire.
The oddest thing is that it is impossible to discern any consistent core thinking, values or logic from the way Ma has handled these three issues. Even his style has been inconsistent. Is he impatient or indecisive, stubborn or changeable? Is he keen to tackle the issues or eager to avoid them? Is he a conservative or a reformer? Is he a president for the whole nation or an advocate for the disadvantaged, or does he stand on the side of those with vested interests? He appears at times to be all of these things, and yet none of them.
As soon as he became president, Ma proclaimed that taxes should be made fairer. It looked as though he was proud to be seen as a reformer. While his Cabinet’s tax reform ideas are meant to favor the disadvantaged, they have not been well thought out. Now that big securities companies are turning up the pressure, Ma has left Minister of Finance Christina Liu (劉憶如) to fight the issue single-handedly and in so doing appears to have moved to the side of vested interests.
In announcing that the price of electricity would be raised in three stages, he was doing the Cabinet’s job for it, but on the US beef issue he has dodged and weaved and avoided making a decision.
When a leader has no consistent core ideology, logic or style, the consequences can be disastrous. Taiwan today is full of conflicts, but if there is one thing that just about everyone agrees on, it is that Ma is unfit for his job.
The media never stop criticizing him. The opposition parties want him to answer lawmakers’ questions in the legislature and they have mobilized thousands of people to protest against him, while KMT members are plotting a palace coup or a Cabinet shakeup. What they all have in common is the desire to teach Ma a lesson.
However, if the problem is that Ma has no consistent core ideology or governing style, then having lots of people take to the streets is not going to put him on the right track.
Persuading Ma to answer lawmakers’ questions will not solve the problem, and a successful palace coup or Cabinet shakeup is unlikely to do the trick either. The awful truth is that, protected as he is by the Constitution, Ma will go on governing this country incompetently until the end of his second four-year term.
Considering how unbearable life is becoming for many, it was necessary for crowds of protesters to hit the streets on Saturday and pour out their grievances. Apart from venting our anger, however, we need to take a long, hard look at Taiwan’s political system. We need to take a longer-term view and think about how to establish a system in which powers and responsibilities are clearly divided.
We should no longer put up with a system in which leaders remain safe and comfortable in their posts no matter how lousy a job they do.
Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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