To mark his two years in office, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has built two new castles in the sky: a “golden decade” and a “six country” goal — building a strong country based on innovation, reviving the country by promoting culture, initiating environmental protection measures to save the country, consolidating the country with constitutional politics, promoting social welfare to make the country more secure and ensuring peace to protect the country.
Ma is promising Taiwan a bed of roses, but apart from piling beautiful but empty words on top of each other, his “six country” goals offer no substantive policy suggestions. The public response seems to be: “Here he goes again, yet another example of government by slogan.”
Following the 10 infrastructure projects during the reign of Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has promoted other national construction projects, including manufacturing centers, sea cargo transshipment centers, air cargo transshipment centers, financial centers, telecommunications centers, media centers and other Asia-Pacific regional operations centers as a strategy to bring Taiwan into the 21st century. They have all been economic illusions that have died an early death.
Premiers under the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government also offered their visions, but their plans were shelved when they left office.
When the government puts forward grand plans, the goal always seems to be to mislead voters — the grander the promise, the greater the chance it will come to naught. The most obvious example is Ma’s election promise that he would create 6 percent annual economic growth, reduce unemployment to 3 percent and bring about a per capita income of US$30,000. After his election, economic growth figures have been dropping and unemployment has gone up. Instead of living up to his promise that everything would be fine if he were elected, every election promise has been broken, but he has not seen fit to apologize to the public for the great discrepancy between his promises and reality.
Ma’s six country statement is meant to sound good, but it is unlikely that it will stand the test of time. As environmental activists demand that the wetlands at the 202 Munitions Works in Taipei City’s Nangang District (南港) — often referred to as the last lung of Taipei — be saved, the government’s decision to turn it into a technology park is diametrically opposed to the part of the six country statement that talks about “initiating environmental protection measures.”
There are also contradictions between the statement and how the administration ignores public opposition and the impact of an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) on small and medium enterprises and disadvantaged industries, how it further aggravates the unemployment situation and how it hurts Taiwan’s sovereignty and strategic position in the international arena. Disregarding the deadlock and delays in the ECFA negotiation process, the government insists that the agreement will be signed next month.
Ma’s “golden decade” is even more incomprehensible. Two years remain in Ma’s term, so even if he were re-elected, he would only have six years. He is thus passing responsibility for four to eight years of his plan to the next president, or even presidents. How can a vision with so many holes in it be implemented? Given Ma’s incompetence and lack of credibility, who will believe him? His “golden decade” is simply an inferior rip-off of DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) 10-year party program.
Ma has bragged too much and done too little about his castles in the sky and he is incapable of controlling and completing the projects. As a result, his approval ratings continue to hover around 30 percent. After two years in office, Ma remains incapable of self-criticism and he is resorting to government by slogan. Only this time, no one will believe him.
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