In his inaugural speech on Tuesday, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) extended an olive branch to Beijing. While the president talked in some detail about opportunities for cross-strait reconciliation, he showed little rhetorical interest in mending the political divide at home.
Ma therefore missed his first opportunity in his capacity as head of state to deal positively with the bitterness generated by an intense and divisive presidential race.
Ma’s victory in the March election was decisive, garnering 58.45 percent of the vote.
But the president could have shown a little more grace by reaching out to that substantial part of the electorate that rejected his campaign in favor of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and his running mate, Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌).
His words on Tuesday, instead, were addressed to his supporters.
Referring to the last eight years under the DPP administration, Ma said: “During that difficult time, faith in politics was low, political maneuvering was high and economic security was absent.”
These were hardly the words of a statesman looking to broaden his appeal. And the whiff of hyperbole they contained will not make Ma look very credible when the complexity of Taiwan’s economic circumstances hits home in the coming months.
On his election victory, Ma said: “The people have chosen clean politics, an open economy, ethnic harmony and peaceful cross-strait relations in opening their arms to the future.”
These statements will not diminish the skepticism of the millions of people who did not vote for him. They were words delivered by Ma the presidential candidate, not Ma the leader of a country.
The degree of Ma’s criticism of the previous administration was imprudent at a ceremony that could have been a celebration of the democratic process that installed him and of the transition from the tensions of election season.
Ma must now speak as the voice of Taiwan, bridging the partisan gap whenever possible, and not merely parrot belligerent voices in the pan-blue camp, as he has grown accustomed to doing.
It was not so long ago that pundits and politicians attacked former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) for failing to act as a president for all, despite proclaiming himself to be “the people’s president.” How rapidly their tune has changed with the recovery of executive power.
Garnering support across the political spectrum is not just about fortifying one’s political base. A major task facing Ma and his administration in the first year will be to mitigate the partisan divide that has proven so obstructive in producing legislation of substance.
Ma’s words on Tuesday may not have been a move in that direction, but the new president and his Cabinet still have time over the next few weeks to set a more positive tone in the way they conduct their affairs. The DPP is a minority party, but its support base is considerable; an executive that runs roughshod over the differing sensibilities of those supporters would find the going harder than expected.
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the
Many local news media last week reported that COVID-19 is back, citing doctors’ observations and the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) statistics. The CDC said that cases would peak this month and urged people to take preventive measures. Although COVID-19 has never been eliminated, it has become more manageable, and restrictions were dropped, enabling people to return to their normal way of life due to decreasing hospitalizations and deaths. In Taiwan, mandatory reporting of confirmed cases and home isolation ended in March last year, while the mask mandate at hospitals and healthcare facilities stopped in May. However, the CDC last week said the number