Despite his claim that the four agreements signed last week by cross-strait negotiators serve the interests of the public, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) did not seem to prepare the ground very well nor did he appear to care about conflicting opinions regarding his efforts to improve cross-strait relations, analysts said.
The meeting between Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and his Chinese counterpart, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) from Monday through Friday brought tensions to the surface in Taiwan.
The large-scale protest organized by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on Thursday was the third demonstration organized opposing Ma’s cross-strait policies since he assumed office in May.
While the ruling and opposition parties have blamed each other for inflaming tensions and causing the protesters to clash with police, both sides have also called for dialogue.
DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said she was willing to talk to Ma to properly address her party’s concerns and differences with the government. The Presidential Office said it would be happy to make arrangements for such a meeting, as long as Tsai genuinely wants to talk.
Ku Chung-hwa (顧忠華), an executive member at Taipei Society, said Ma should have looked for ways to sell his cross-strait polices, because his job was to make his policies work.
“It has been a blind spot of Ma and his government since they took office,” Ku said. “They thought they had obtained a mandate from the 7 million Taiwanese [who voted for them] and as the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] controls four branches of government, they can do whatever they want and need not listen to the voices of the people or opposition parties.”
However, they misjudged the situation and the price they had to pay was a high one, Ku said.
Regardless of the four agreements, Ku said Ma should have had a better sense of the political meaning of Chen’s visit and that the public and opposition have lingering doubts about his cross-strait initiative.
“It seems as if the ruling and opposition parties are living on two different planets rather than in the same country,” Ku said.
While the SEF and ARATS have decided to meet at least twice a year, there are a few things Ma and his government could do in preparation, Ku said. Among them was to allow the legislature and opposition parties to play a more active role in cross-strait negotiations, he said.
Hawang Shiow-duan (黃秀端), a political science professor at Soochow University, agreed, adding that all agreements must be approved by the legislature and that any accord concerning sovereignty must be voted on by the people.
If Ma believed the four agreements would be so beneficial to Taiwan, Hawang said, he should have offered a clearer account of how those benefits the country, instead of wondering why the public was not on his side.
He was also duty bound to tell the public whether direct aviation links and the new aviation route would threaten national security and what the government’s response would be to remedy the situation.
“Cross-strait relations are not just about the economy and trade. Security is paramount,” she said. “Before China abandons its military option against Taiwan, it is still our potential enemy regardless of its seemingly friendly attitude. We must also bear in mind that it has more than 1,000 missiles targeted at us.”
To avoid future confrontation, Hawang said Ma should communicate with the opposition before setting his cross-strait agenda, adding that she was disappointed by his rejection of Tsai’s request to discuss cross-strait policies and the sovereignty issue with him.
“His excuse was that ‘the election is over,’ but that only showed his arrogance,” she said. “He completely misses the meaning of a presidential mandate. That is the crux of the problem.”
Frank Liu (劉正山), a professor at National Sun Yat-sen University’s Institute of Political Science, concurred.
Liu said it was difficult to interpret why voters support a particular candidate. Ma, however, seemed to be convinced that all 7 million who voted for him supported his cross-strait policy and therefore reached the conclusion that he did not need to pay attention to what the opposition thought.
While it requires a great deal of political skill to resolve differences with the opposition, Liu said, Ma has turned a deaf ear to their concerns and pressed ahead with the Chiang-Chen meeting. The result was to be expected — a backlash, he said. In addition to holding talks with the opposition, Liu said, Ma owed the public an explanation as to why he could shake hands with representatives from Beijing and how he handled thorny issues that were irreconcilable under the DPP administration.
“He must tell the public whether there are any secret deals involved,” Liu said. “It is dangerous for Ma to take all the credit for what he thinks is a cross-strait breakthrough [when] what he has actually received in return is just a small favor by Beijing.”
Liu urged Ma to minimize the role the KMT plays in cross-strait negotiations and let the two quasi-official agencies do their job.
“No country in the world has a political party representing the government at the negotiating table,” Liu said. “It is very dangerous to let the KMT and Chinese Communist Party set the cross-strait agenda.”
Although former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) has proposed abolishing the SEF and replacing unofficial negotiations with government-to-government exchanges, Liu said the SEF was a “necessary evil” at the moment.
Commenting on Thursday’s demonstration, Liu said protests were a norm in a democracy, but that it was a pity that violent clashes between protesters and police had sabotaged the image of the DPP and eclipsed the message the party wanted to get across.
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