He won Taiwan’s largest-ever landslide victory, a safe pair of hands promising prosperity and stability, but President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) leaves office this month caricatured as incompetent, aloof and wildly out of step with public sentiment.
Coolly coiffed with a sweep of jet-black hair, urbane Ma was seen as a reliable “Mr Clean” when he stormed to victory for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in 2008, replacing an outgoing opposition government mired in corruption.
However, as he prepares to hand the reins of power to president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on Friday, Ma faces possible court action and leaves a legacy fraught with division.
Photo: AFP
Relations with Beijing had sunk to a low under Ma’s predecessor, president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the DPP. Ma banked on friendlier ties for Taiwan to thrive.
A rapprochement and a slew of trade deals followed, culminating in a historic handshake with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in November last year.
However, while Ma might have fulfilled a personal ambition, the public felt short-changed and increasingly saw him as a Chinese puppet jeopardizing Taiwan’s sovereignty.
Photo: AFP
During student-led protests in 2014 against the Ma administration’s handling of a trade pact with China, rally posters portrayed Ma with a Hitler moustache.
Other banners showed him with antlers growing out of his ears — a pointed jibe after Ma had mistakenly said that deer antlers used for Chinese medicine were actually hair from the animal’s ears.
At its worst, his popularity faded to 9 percent — earning him the nickname “9 percent president” among opponents.
Ma was “unable to reach out to the local Taiwanese,” instead making relations with Beijing his priority, Hong Kong Baptist University political science professor Jean-Pierre Cabestan said.
He also failed to bridge divisions within his own party.
“He lacks leadership and charisma,” Cabestan said. “He was unable to lead and control the KMT, his ministers and gave the impression of being soft with China and hard with the opposition.”
After his presidential immunity lapses, Ma could face lawsuits from political rivals relating to the alleged leaking of political secrets and failure to declare assets.
It is an ignominious sign-off for the Harvard-educated former minister of justice and Taipei mayor, and son of a senior KMT official.
Beleaguered Ma has admitted his government could have done better to meet the demands of a public stretched by high rents and low salaries, but he staunchly defends his China policy as having brought peace to the region.
“Ma’s policies have painted him as for the 1 percent and China, at a time when society at large is fed up with both,” Britain’s University of Nottingham School of Contemporary Chinese Studies associate professor Jonathan Sullivan said.
“Adding to these policy outcomes is Ma’s personal reputation for aloofness, indecisiveness — but paradoxically with an authoritarian streak — incompetence and inability to balance the interests of his party, Taiwan and his own personal objectives,” Sullivan added.
Even staunch KMT supporters have turned their backs, with the party in tatters after having lost its majority in the legislature for the first time under Ma.
“We had high hopes, but we saw our faith in him fading away,” said Sun Chieh-yi, 59, a retired watch shop owner who comes from a traditionally pro-KMT family. “People do not feel their lives are any better than before.”
However, some observers said history might look back more kindly on Ma, as China relations are set to cool once more under Tsai and the traditionally pro-independence DPP, with concerns cross-strait friction might surge.
“At least he showed disputes between the two former rivals could be solved in a peaceful manner,” National Sun Yat-sen University political science professor Liao Da-chi (廖達琪) said.
In some ways, Ma could never win, Sullivan said.
“He was caught between two stalls: China calls him weak for failing to push rapprochement further. The majority of Taiwanese feel he went too far too quickly, and against their wishes,” Sullivan said.
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