It is the second year of the alleged reign of Ma the Incompetent in Taiwan, and it is no secret that the comfort level of the citizens of Taiwan post Morakot has hit an all time low. Whether one is blue or green, the prevalent and recurring theme song is the Rolling Stones, "I can't get no satisfaction." Why? As E.B.B. says, "Let me count the ways" and this is without even mentioning 6-3-3.
First there was the dire statement from that land across the Strait. Hong Kong announced that the number of people living below their poverty line had hit a record high i.e. 1.23 million people or 17.9 percent of its population of 7 million are considered poor. (We're not talking about the vast poor in continental China, here, but just in Hong Kong.) Hong Kong, that's the island that in 1997 sang a glorious song about how great it was to be rich and return to autocratic Mother China. For democratic Taiwanese, the red flags are up. It is an obvious concern that Ma the Incompetent's long term want is for Taiwan to follow in that same path.
Then there is the added fact that Ma the Incompetent keeps asking the people to give him a blank check in establishing ECFA with China. No one even knows what will be in ECFA; many see that there are some areas where Taiwan could gain, but there are also many areas where Taiwan can lose big time. Ma the Incompetent says "trust me."
With ECFA, it all depends on the quality of the negotiators that Taiwan has and what their long term goals are. Ma has been surrounding himself with sycophants and unificationists, so that isn't comforting. Taiwan appears to have a bunch of blind-eyed rookies going in there with some old timers who believe in the out-dated Republic of China Constitution with its pie-eyed dreams. Further Ma's government has been parroting the Beijing line as far as denigrating the Dalai Lama, and refusing to invite Rebeiya Kadeer to Taiwan. Is Ma's team so desperate to strike a deal with Beijing that it feels obligated to try to please Beijing even before the negotiations have started? Not a good start. If Ma the Incompetent's China hope and gamble does not pay off, the one-trick pony doesn't seem to have a Plan B. This is not comforting.
Then there has been the erosion of human rights in Taiwan. Added to this is the recent announcement that wiretaps have increased dramatically under Ma. This is the same Ma that has already ignored the numerous protest letters from scholars and writers on the decline of human rights. Ma says that he will call for an investigation into this latest of wiretap accusations, but Ma has always been long on promises and short on delivery. Ma's words are like the fox saying that he will investigate the fact that the security of the chicken coop has been breached. That too is not comforting.
A final development is that Ma, while claiming to be a caring, concerned man of the people, has just increased and widened the perimeter of security around the Presidential Palace. It is a far greater perimeter than either Lee Teng-hui or Chen Shui-bian had. Does the phony pony feel that more and more Taiwanese are on to him? His patronizing paternalism was seen for what it is in the aftermath of Morakot. Even the foreign media began to realize what so many at ground zero in Taiwan knew as far as Ma's incompetence. So, is Ma sensing that many Taiwanese feel the need for a "final solution" even before 2012? Some claim that Chiang Ching-kuo founded democracy in Taiwan. Others say that Chiang Ching-kuo became democratic when the USA abandoned autocratic Taiwan for autocratic China and some Taiwanese tried to assassinate him. "I can't get no satisfaction . . ."
Source: Jerome F. Keating's writings
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