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What has Ma done for
the nation?
By James Wang 王景弘
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had supported two things all his life: “safeguard
the Diaoyutai Islands” (釣魚台) and “eventual unification.”
When former president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) regime was pushed out of the UN in
1971, it lost its legitimacy as representative of China.
The next year, when his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) took over, he mobilized
intellectuals with a call to “implement reforms to safeguard Taiwan,” in order
to resist pressure coming from the Chinese Communist Party. During that time, Ma
joined calls from the left wing to safeguard the Diaoyutais.
Ma has never thought of Taiwan as a country or resisted China’s intention to
annex it. After he enjoyed the fruits democratization and was elected president,
he said that the Republic of China’s (ROC) sovereignty encompasses all China,
though he dares not fight for that sovereignty.
Instead, he continues to play the game of protecting the Diaoyutais together
with China.
Ma is of the opinion that he can do whatever he pleases because he no longer
faces any re-election pressure. In doing so, he fails to protect Taiwan’s
sovereignty and does nothing to protect the public’s standard of living or
implement judicial reform, social fairness and justice. He manipulates the
Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) assets to control the party’s legislators and
ignores public opinion. He calls for reform in order to attract votes to the KMT,
while shoring up a corrupt system and maintaining special privileges by
rejecting those very reforms.
To listen to the public and push for true reform, the opposition parties have
suggested that a national affairs conference be held. The government’s response
was to quote the Constitution and say that problems should be resolved “within
the system.”
Public discontent and anger have reached boiling point and the Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP) has launched a series of protest marches, while the Ma
administration continues to hide behind “the system.”
As the DPP’s protest marches gathered momentum, a KMT legislator quoted former
vice president Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) as saying that: “Being angry at each other
will not help support the nation,” in the hope that this would put out the fire.
This only highlights Ma’s ineptitude, ignorance of public opinion and reluctance
to push for reform and protect Taiwan.
The “one China” consensus he has reached with Beijing and his support of
“eventual unification” are a denial of Taiwan’s independence and sovereignty.
They deepen the public’s sense of uncertainty and lose a collective goal to work
toward.
Some Taiwanese businesspeople are even hoping to serve as members of the Chinese
People’s Political Consultative Conference in an attempt to seek protection in
the event of unification.
Chiang Ching-kuo understood that the public wanted to separate Taiwan from
China, and that the their greatest fear was Chinese annexation.
However, Ma keeps hiding behind the Constitution and talking about mutual
non-recognition of sovereignty; mutual non-denial of authority to govern,
special relations and peace dividends while ignoring the consequences of getting
trapped inside Beijing’s “one China” framework.
Chiang Ching-kuo’s policy to implement reforms to safeguard Taiwan was
half-baked and focused on interior affairs. Instead of putting in place free
elections for the full legislature, he only allowed by-elections for a limited
number of vacant seats.
Still, those reforms pointed the way forward for the nation’s democratization
and localization by allowing more seats for Taiwanese and appointing young
Taiwanese to intermediate levels to improve the government’s legitimacy and
representativeness domestically.
Such perfunctory reform did not meet the people’s demands for democratization
and legitimate government nor did it define the new national status to the
outside world in to deal with China’s diplomatic blockade.
Although Chiang Ching-Kuo continued his unilateral calls for using the “Three
Principles of the People” to unify China, he was firmly opposed to peace talks
and Beijing’s united front tactics and did not work to build a consensus.
Based on his strategy to protect Taiwan, he firmly separated Taiwan from China
and protected its independent status.
In contrast to Chiang Ching-kuo’s reform, the most complete and confident
strategy for safeguarding and defending Taiwan was proposed by then-vice
minister of foreign affairs Yang Hsi-kun (楊西崑), who was nicknamed “Mr Africa.”
Yang’s suggestions included: Dismissing the legislature and establishing a
temporary legislature with two-thirds of the seats reserved for Taiwanese and
one-third for Mainlanders; allowing the general public to decide Taiwan’s future
status through a referendum; changing the national title to the “Republic of
Chinese Taiwan” to declare that the Taiwanese government was completely
unrelated to China or the Chinese government and stressing that the word
“Chinese” in the new title merely referred to the fact that Taiwanese were of
Chinese descent and held no other political significance.
The logic of Yang’s strategy was simple: To redistribute power through
democratic means, solve the government’s lack of representativeness and
legitimacy, and to confirm Taiwan’s sovereignty through democratic referendum,
establishing a new country that did not fall under China’s jurisdiction or claim
jurisdiction over China.
Neither Chiang Kai-shek nor his son took up Yang’s democratic strategy, but some
of his suggestions were implemented later.
For example, Chang Ching-kuo agreed to remain member of the Asian Development
Bank under the name “Taipei, China” in 1986 and former president Lee Teng-hui
(李登輝) implemented the full re-election of the legislature, resulting in
Taiwanese being elected to more than two-thirds of all legislative seats.
The Constitution, which was written and passed without the input of Taiwanese,
has since been amended seven times by the Taiwanese-dominated legislature.
With the idea of “the Republic of China on Taiwan,” Lee also said that relations
between Taiwan and China were a matter of “state-to-state relations” or “special
state-to-state relations.”
Lee and former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) insisted on the “localization” of
the ROC and its de facto independence that separated Taiwan from China.
Most people understood that these pro-Taiwanese governments were not opposed to
having ties to China, but that Chinese annexation would be opposed and the
refusal to compromise on the sovereignty issue would continue.
The Ma government has since reversed the reform efforts safeguarding Taiwan’s
sovereignty.
It should be noted that Yang was a Mainlander, but his suggestions were similar
to those in the Declaration of Formosan Self-Salvation proposed in 1964 by
former presidential advisor Peng Ming-min (彭明敏) and his then students, Hsieh
Tsung-min (謝聰敏) and Wei Ting-chao (魏廷朝), which came with complete complementary
measures and thorough reform.
Although Yang understood the African peoples’ hope for independence, he did not
understand the deep slave mentality of the KMT’s Taiwanese members, and although
he understood Taiwanese determination to resist Chinese annexation, he did not
understand that Ma is haunted by the curse inscribed on the urn of his father’s
ashes –– “Replace independence with gradual unification.”
Although Taiwanese lawmakers now hold more than two-thirds of all legislative
seats, Ma is still controlling the KMT’s ill-gotten party assets and the
judiciary.
This is turning the KMT’s Taiwanese legislators into mere copies of the old
crooks who would only take orders from the two Chiangs. They have no choice but
to defend the inept government and have no say in or ability to review Ma’s
decisions to give up Taiwan’s independence.
Instead, they have a shared interest in sustaining Ma’s false reforms and
corruption.
On the surface, Taiwan’s democratization and free elections provide the
government with representativeness and legitimacy. In reality, all the power is
in the hands of one man.
Taiwanese KMT legislators are sitting back and watching as the incompetent
government abuses its people, as Ma realizes his father’s dying wish for
eventual unification and as he violates the people’s will and the
anti-annexation policy that had been in place during the governments of Chiang
Kai-shek, Chiang Ching-kuo, Lee and Chen.
In a speech last month, Siew cited a quote from former US president John F.
Kennedy in defense of the government: “Ask not what your country can do for you,
ask what you can do for your country.”
However, it is a matter of political common sense that “government” is not the
same as “country.” Ma has never thought of Taiwan as a country.
Perhaps it would have been more appropriate if Siew had quoted former US
president George H. W. Bush, who said “I don’t hate government. A government
that remembers who is its master is a good and needed thing.”
Ma has supported safeguarding the Diaoyutais all his life, but he has no
intention of safeguarding Taiwan. As he prepares for battle, he has forgotten
who his masters are. Such a government is a bully and should be replaced. As
angry masters Taiwanese should ask Ma: What have you done for Taiwan? What have
you done for us?
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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