Who really rules Taiwan?
The impact of the cross-strait service trade pact is boiling over from Taiwan and sweeping across the world. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) played his old trick by first sending former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) to meet Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping (習近平) on June 13, then dispatching Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Lin Join-sane (林中森) to sign the trade agreement without any prior or subsequent consultation with legislators.
Ma totally ignored the democratic system of government. He manipulates the Republic of China (ROC) exiled government as a one-party KMT game. Wu is a KMT member, not a government official, so how can he represent Taiwanese in negotiations with China? Then, Lin signed the agreement without any authorization from legislators.
Ma always plays this fait accompli trick, as previously seen when he jailed his predecessor, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), looking for the allegations and incriminating evidence only afterward.
Ma’s repeated trickery has finally led people to see through him and see that his hands are dirty. He should be ashamed.
However, his deceptiveness is not a shock to the world: On Nov. 24 last year, the The Economist exposed him as “Ma the bumbler.” Yet the word “bumbler” does not seem to adequately reflect what Ma has done. Yes, as a WTO member, Taiwan needs to open its economy to the world for fair competition, but the problem is that Ma went about this without holding any domestic communication.
He acts like a king who can do whatever he wants, however he wants. Having completely sidelined the checks and balances of the democratic system, “dominator” would seem a more appropriate word to describe him.
Ma exaggeratedly professes to the public that he is the president of the ROC, which has sovereignty over China and Taiwan. However, when he met a low-level Chinese official, Ma told the official to address him as “sir,” but the Beijing official only addressed him as “you.” Obviously, the Chinese do not think Ma has a legal right to China.
Does he have a right to Taiwan? Does Ma, or his ROC government-in-exile, have sovereignty over Taiwan? The answer is no, neither Ma nor the ROC government owns Taiwan.
Maybe someone will raise the question that if neither Ma nor the ROC government have sovereignty over the nation, how does he have the authority to dispatch someone to sign the service pact? Is the agreement even binding?
The answer, again, is no, because the ROC government is not the legitimate ruler of Taiwan. The agreement is only valid and binding between the ROC and China, not Taiwan and China, for there is no legal document or international treaty which shows that Japan transferred control of Taiwan to the ROC government. Nor is there any record showing that Taiwan was ever incorporated into the ROC’s territory.
In 1949, Mao Zedong (毛澤東) defeated Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and established the People’s Republic of China, forcing Chiang to flee to Taiwan and the ROC became an exiled government.
Under the service agreement, the ROC government is only a governing authority of Taiwan.
Yes, it has the power to sign a treaty or agreement on the economy, but the validation of such a pact is subject to the people’s and their representative’s ratification.
Maybe it is time for Taiwanese to resolve the question of the ROC government being the governing authority of their nation. Why is Taiwan’s government not for Taiwan?
John Hsieh
Hayward, California
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