President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Apple Daily that it is Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu’s (朱立倫) responsibility to find the best candidate for next year’s presidential election, adding that if he is unable to, he must shoulder the responsibility himself.
However, instead of putting the blame on Chu, Ma should realize that he is at the root of the dilemma facing the party.
Prominent KMT politicians — including Chu, Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) — have publicly announced that they would not join the presidential race, and when the registration period for the primary ended yesterday afternoon, only Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) and former health minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良) — both of whom are considered not to be particularly strong candidates — had registered.
Ma is certainly anxious about the situation. According to the Apple Daily, he was a bit emotional when saying that Chu, as the KMT chairman, should be responsible to find a strong candidate for the party.
Ma cited himself as an example, saying that, although he was only a law professor at National Chengchi Univesity and a KMT Central Standing Committee member in 1998, he nevertheless won the Taipei mayoral election that year against then-mayor Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), who was seeking re-election and had an approval rating of more than 70 percent.
Instead of wallowing in nostalgia, Ma should analyze his behavior while in power, as it is due to his leadership that the government and the KMT have such low approval ratings, with Ma’s at just 10 percent.
Clearly, under such circumstances, anyone who volunteers to run for president on the KMT ticket would be stained by Ma’s administration, and with the scale of political and financial mobilization required to mount a presidential campaign, it might end the career of someone who runs and loses.
A KMT politician, in response to Ma’s comment that party members should put aside their personal concerns and fight for the party’s honor, might well ask: “Why should I?”
Ma’s reference to the 1998 Taipei mayoral election might not work to his advantage either.
To begin with, in 1998, then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) had a high level of support among both KMT and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) supporters.
Ma might also recall that his loyalties to the nation were questioned during the mayoral campaign, with commentators describing him as the Hong Kong-born son of a pro-unification former KMT official.
Lee held his hand up during a rally, declaring him a “new Taiwanese.”
In addition, the KMT has historically had the support of about 60 percent of Taipei residents, so it was not such a feat for him to defeat a DPP candidate.
So, instead of blaming Chu for the KMT’s problems, Ma should take a look in the mirror.
If he is concerned about the fate of the party, he should stop making statements advocating the unification of Taiwan and China, because the majority of Taiwanese do not support it and he is damaging the KMT.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS