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EDITORIAL: Ma’s past
returns to haunt him
Sometimes it is truly amazing just how far a politician can change their stance
on a particular issue.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) provides an example of just such a case as his
administration tries to persuade Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers to
support an amendment to the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法) that would
ease import restrictions on beef containing residue of the livestock feed
additive ractopamine.
Saying relaxing the ban is a prerequisite for the resumption of negotiations
with the US on the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA), Ma yesterday
stressed the alleged grave consequences for economic and trade liberalization
should the bill fail again to clear the legislature in next month’s extra
three-day session.
Politicians may like to think the public is gullible and that people have
short-term memories, but the truth is that voters are neither as forgetful nor
as naive as politicians think. However, many do recall just how adamantly Ma
opposed relaxing the import ban on meat products containing ractopamine residue
in the past.
In August 2007, then-presidential candidate Ma issued a statement criticizing
the then-Democratic Progressive Party administration’s plan to relax the ban on
US pork imports containing residue of leanness-enhancing drugs. Calling the
proposed lifting of the ban “unacceptable,” Ma said Taiwanese have different
eating habits from people in the US and they consume more internal organs, where
the drugs’ residue is especially high, so therefore the government must keep its
ban in place.
“Whether looking at it from the perspective of 23 million people’s health or the
domestic pork industry, which is worth NT$60 billion [US$2 billion today] ... I
absolutely cannot accept the ban on imported pork containing leanness-enhancing
drugs being lifted,” candidate Ma said, stressing it was the government’s duty
to safeguard the health of the people.
What changed Ma’s mind — the passage of time or the pressures of being head of
state? Could it be a case of short-term memory loss? A case of campaign trail
posturing? Or worse — a blatant disregard of what he said in the past now that
he has been twice voted into the Presidential Office and no longer needs to
please the voters?
Perhaps he is just opposed to such drug residue in pork and pork products
because they are consumed in much greater quantities in Taiwan than beef and
beef by-products are? A question, so to speak, of what’s good for the goose is
not good for the gander?
Thanks to the Internet, politicians’ past speeches can easily be unearthed
online.
Ma’s U-turn on meat imports containing ractopamine has led many to question his
credibility. However, more important than the issue of Ma’s credibility is an
even more grave matter — whether the health of Taiwanese will suffer as a result
of the government’s disregard for their wellbeing.
With the extraordinary legislative session still a month away, it is to be hoped
that Ma will use the time to reflect on his former stance, come to his senses
and understand the true meaning of a government’s responsibility to its people.
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