功在中華：笨拙之驢，或精明之馬？

功在中華：笨拙之驢，或精明之馬？

【Comment】
Frankly, I do not agree with the comment of The Economist at all. 
Ma forced Lien Chan, the former KMT Chairperson, to step down, beat all the rivals in his party and won two Presidential Elections in 2008 and 2012.  He is definitely NOT a bumbler.
He is executing his precise China-friendly policy: halts our economic and democratic progress, let China buy out Taiwan's companies which hold advanced manufacturing technologies and recruit our elites at extremely low cost etc. in less than 5 years.
Ma is more capable than most people imagine.  All the voters now can do nothing but swallow the worst result for Taiwan: being merged by China.
Uncle Sam, which keeps encouraging Ma's assertive pro-China moves, should bear at least half the responsibility.  But so what?  The point is the US is not the country which has to face the threat of annexation by the communist China.  revised at 2258

我完全不同意經濟學人的斷言：馬是笨拙之人。就親中政策而言，能在極短期間內讓台灣的人才與公司落入能被中國以極低價格收購的窘境，正好證明馬的精明能幹──功在中華。笨蛋的是所有選民，現已無可奈何──台灣或只剩「歸屬中國」的選項。不斷鼓勵與催促馬的傾中政策，美國豈不是要付一半責任？但，又怎樣呢？可能被併吞的是台灣，又不是美國。我同意與擔心的是最後一句：近期內無人可能或願意出來承擔，且馬絕不認錯，絕不改變。  ...presidential hopefuls will not try to oust or even outshine Mr. Ma anytime soon.  After all, they will not want to take responsibility for the country’s economic problems.  Nothing suggests Mr. Ma’s main policies will change (or that they should).

Ma the bumbler: A former heart-throb loses his shine◎The Economist（2012.11.17）
http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21566657-former-heart-throb-loses-his-shine-ma-bumbler

Taiwan politics

WHEN he was first elected in 2008, Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, offered Taiwanese high hopes that the island’s economy would open a new chapter.  He promised ground-breaking agreements with China to help end Taiwan’s growing economic marginalisation.  At the time, Mr. Ma’s image was of a clean technocrat able to rise above the cronyism and infighting of his party, the Kuomintang (KMT).  He was a welcome contrast to his fiery and pro-independence predecessor, Chen Shui-bian, now in jail for corruption.

Five years on, and despite being handily re-elected ten months ago, much has changed.  In particular, popular satisfaction with Mr. Ma has plummeted, to a record low of 13%, according to the TVBS Poll Centre.  The country appears to agree on one thing: Mr. Ma is an ineffectual bumbler.

Ordinary people do not find their livelihoods improving.  Salaries have stagnated for a decade.  The most visible impact of more open ties with China, which include a free-trade agreement, has been property speculation in anticipation of a flood of mainland money.  Housing in former working-class areas on the edge of Taipei, the capital, now costs up to 40 times the average annual wage of $15,400.  The number of families below the poverty line has leapt.  Labour activists have taken to pelting the presidential office with eggs.

Exports account for 70% of GDP.  So some of Taiwan’s problems are down to the dismal state of rich-world economies.  Yet Mr. Ma’s leadership is also to blame.  He has failed to paint a more hopeful future, with sometimes hard measures needed now.  Worse, he frequently tweaks policies in response to opposition or media criticism.  It suggests indecisiveness.

Public anger first arose in June, when Mr. Ma raised the price of government-subsidised electricity.  Few Taiwanese understood why, even though Taiwan’s state-owned power company loses billions.  In the face of public outrage, Mr. Ma postponed a second round of electricity price rises scheduled for December.  They will now take place later next year.

People are also worried that a national pension scheme is on course for bankruptcy in less than two decades.  Yet Mr. Ma cannot bring himself to raise premiums sharply, because of the temporary unpopularity it risks.  When Mr. Ma does try to appeal to Taiwanese who make up the island’s broad political centre, it often backfires with his party’s core supporters.  Following public grumbles that retired civil servants, teachers and ex-servicemen were a privileged group, the cabinet announced plans to cut more than $300m in year-end bonuses, affecting around 381,000.  The trouble was, veterans are among the KMT’s most fervent backers.  Now some threaten to take to the streets in protest and deprive the KMT of their votes until the plan is scrapped.  Meanwhile, Mr. Ma’s clean image has been sullied by the indictment of the cabinet secretary-general for graft.

Cracks are starting to grow in the KMT façade.  Recently Sean Lien, a prominent politician, criticised Mr Ma’s economic policies, saying that any politician in office during this time of sluggish growth was at best a “master of a beggar clan”—implying a country of paupers.

But the next election is four years away, and presidential hopefuls will not try to oust or even outshine Mr. Ma anytime soon.  After all, they will not want to take responsibility for the country’s economic problems.  Nothing suggests Mr. Ma’s main policies will change (or that they should), but his credibility is draining by the day.