Thu, May 21, 2009 page3

• [MA YING-JEOU'S FIRST YEAR] : Ma has harmed competitiveness: Tsai

  LITTLE TO SHOW The DPP said the first year of Ma Ying-jeou’s presidency had brought Taiwan little more than a loss of national sovereignty and international competitiveness

  • By Rich Chang / STAFF REPORTER
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  The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday that a slump in Taiwan’s overall competitiveness and the loss of sovereignty are the products of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) first year in office.

  DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) told a press conference yesterday that Taiwan’s competitiveness had slipped 10 places from 13th to 23rd in this year’s International Institute for ­Management Development (IMD) World Competitiveness Yearbook, a slump she pinned on the Ma administration’s poor performance.

  “In the last year, Ma has emphasized China, but forgot about the rest of the world. He and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) conducted secret negotiations with China and Taiwan’s World Health Assembly (WHA) bid is a good example of that,” Tsai said.

  She added that Ma had refused to tell the nation what price Taiwan had paid in return for ­attending the WHA.

  Ma also refused to say whether he recognized the memorandum of understanding (MOU) the WHO signed with Beijing in 2005 to limit Taiwan’s participation in the organization. The memorandum says Taiwan’s involvement in the WHO must be approved by Beijing and that all communication between Taiwan and the WHO must go through China.

  “Taiwan is participating in the WHA with a sub-sovereign status, or on a par with a non-­governmental organization,” Tsai said. “We ­insist upon Taiwan’s sovereignty 100 percent, but Ma does not consider Taiwan a sovereign nation, so it is not strange that he believes he has not given away any sovereignty.”

  Ma had challenged the DPP in a press conference on Tuesday to produce concrete evidence that he had jeopardized Taiwan’s sovereignty.

  “Ma’s government can not carry on attributing his government’s failure to the former DPP administration. If he always shifts the responsibility to the former DPP government, I don’t know how this president can lead us forward,” she said.

  “Ma said he wants to talk with me now so he can look like he is listening to the complaints raised during Sunday’s rally,” she said.

  “But if Ma persists with such talk, I don’t know what the basis for our conversation would be,” Tsai said, referring to the invitation she received to talk with the president.

  Tsai said she did not want Ma to raise the same issues again and again. The Presidential Office must offer a concrete agenda for the meeting before she would consider talking to Ma, she said.

  Tsai has said she wants a public debate with Ma on significant national policies, not a meeting that would have the effect of endorsing his policies.

  Meanwhile, the DPP caucus yesterday told a press conference that the net result of Ma’s first year in office was the “total sell out of Taiwan.”

  DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) said the caucus evaluated Ma’s performance and it could be summed up as: “Ruling the country with tricks, selling Taiwan out, presiding over an economic recession, setting back democracy, attempting to establish an authoritarian regime and wanting to complete his goal of eventual unification with China.”

  Also See: Taiwan drops in IMD rankings
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