(圖片來源：Wikimedia Commons, Information Technology Agreement parties.)
President Ma Ying-jeou has been under fire for many things. Broadsides were fired against him in the run-up to the presidential election for buckling under pressure from Washington to let Taiwan import U.S. beef with meat-enhancing ractopamine residue and have since continued unabated since he was re-elected. He has been panned for allowing fuel prices and power rates to go up long before he was sworn in for a second term. He was criticized for attempting to collect capital gains tax from security exchanges. He has been under attack for trying to conclude a peace accord between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. He has been blamed for making Wu Po-hsiung, an honorary chairman of the ruling Kuomintang, describe the relationship between Taipei and Beijing as that of “one country, two areas.” Well, as a matter of fact, whatever he has done or is said to have done is wrong, according to the Democratic Progressive Party.
That's why the opposition party, together with its ally, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, tried to propose a recall of President Ma in the Legislative Yuan not long ago. Altogether 43 lawmakers endorsed the proposal, listing his “10 great criminal acts” that included all the afore-said wrongs and more. The two parties gathered tens of thousands of people to take to the streets in Taipei on Saturday and yesterday to protest against what Tsai Ing-wen, the former chairwoman of the Democratic Progressive Party who Ma defeated on Jan. 14 in the presidential race, describes as an inefficient dictator who has to be ousted as soon as practicable, if Taiwan wishes to survive as a democracy.
Is Ma really an inefficient dictator? Of course not. The fact is that he has been falsely accused of most of the criminal acts, if not all. And that's unfair.
Let's take the case of U.S. beef imports. All Ma wants is to allow beef and beef products with ractopamine residue below a maximum allowable level to be imported. What's wrong with that? Nothing. Americans eat such beef and beef products without any ill effect, not to mention any incidence of poisoning in the long term or short. Japan imports the meat. So does South Korea. One thing the Americans can't understand is why our people in Taiwan are said to dare not eat, for fear of getting poisoned, what they consume almost daily, as an excuse for banning the beef imports. Of course, we are built a little smaller and may have a less tolerable amount of residue, but the allowable level may be lowered to make it perfectly safe for us.
Another reason for the opposition to the imports is that Taiwan's pork suppliers would suffer a huge loss if the lifting of the ban on U.S. beef would lead to that on U.S. pork containing similar residues. Ractopamine is banned in Taiwan, but a number of hog farms have been using it for quite some time. And there is one question that has to be asked. Is a Democratic Progressive Party government able to withstand the U.S. pressure that Tsai and company say has been brought to bear on the Ma administration?
What's wrong with signing the peace accord with China in the next 10 years? It's ridiculous to charge Ma with trying to sell out Taiwan by signing the proposed pact that is supposed to only end the state of war between the two sides of the Strait, because he has to step down exactly four years from the moment he was sworn into office again yesterday. A Democratic Progressive Party president may replace Ma in 2016 and stay in office for four years. Yet there is still two years to spare for Taiwan to conclude the peace accord with the People's Republic of China.
One country with two areas? That's a reality. You may argue that the terms used aren't right, but unless an independent, sovereign state of Taiwan is created, the relationship — which former President Lee Teng-hui the godfather of Taiwan independence, calls a special state-to-state relationship — will remain the same as it is. Call it as you like, China is a divided country.
No governments in the world can stop fuel prices and power rates from going up when crude prices are rising. It so happens that the hiking can be controlled by the government in Taiwan because fuel and electricity are monopolized by the state-owned CPC Corp. and Taiwan Power Co. That explains why the Kuomintang administration and its immediate predecessor of the now-opposition party tried to freeze the prices and power rates for political reasons. But the capping has to go sooner or later, and Ma chose to end the freeze now that he has been returned to power. You may, and should, hold Ma to account for choosing the wrong chief executive officers for the two government enterprises, but he isn't responsible for the hiking, though how much and how fast it is to be enforced is up to debate. Capital gains tax? Tax reform simply has to be made. Did Ma try to hide the outbreak of bird flu? Don't be silly.
All this prompted Richard Bush, a former president of the American Institute in Taiwan and currently director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, to show sympathy with President Ma at a recent seminar. While delivering a keynote speech on “Taiwan's Maturing Democracy,” Bush said Ma is under pressure from the public for poor government and some of the criticism against the president appears prejudiced and unjustified in a still-maturing democratic Taiwan. In particular, Ma is criticized by Tsai for attempting a restoration of autocracy, manipulating public opinion and creating a false one, interfering with parliamentary action, and abusing the power of the president. In short, a very inefficient dictator.
But Ma isn't. Rather, he is a busybody trying to make others' business his own, and a poor one at that. And his opponents know it full well and take every opportunity that presents itself to attack the lame duck busybody president in the hope that their party may come back to power in 2016. That, however, is a bad tactic. Persistent blasphemous reviling won't get a Democratic Progressive Party candidate elected president to replace Ma. Any aspirant for the presidency in four years from now has to have a game plan for curing all the real as well as imagined woes Ma is suffering to persuade eligible voters to vote for him or her.
〈本文僅供參考，不代表本會立場〉
（本文刊載於101.5.21 The China Post 4版 ）
胡思聰
(
2007年6月12日 09:50
)
林祖嘉
(
2018年4月17日 16:11
)
王順民
(
12月6日 16:45
)
張瑞雄
