Late last week, President Ma Ying-jeou finally agreed to hold a direct debate with opposition Democratic Progressive Party Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen on his right-wing Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) government's controversial proposal to sign an "economic cooperation framework agreement" with the authoritarian People's Republic of China.
There should be no doubt that Ma accepted the challenge for a direct debate on the proposed ECFA issued over a year ago by Tsai because of the setback suffered by the KMT in the Dec. 5 "three in-one" elections.
Ma initially maintained that the "local" elections did not affect the KMT government's resolve to rapidly sign the trade pact with the PRC.
However, the unexpectedly narrow victory by a KMT county magistrate candidate in "blue" but heavily industrialized Taoyuan County and the crushing defeats inflicted by the DPP on KMT standard-bearers in agricultural Yunlin, Chiayi and Pingtung counties reflected the deepening anxiety of Taiwan workers and farmers over the ECFA and the potential of this issue to rally support to the rebounding DPP.
Indeed, even polls in pro-KMT media show that public support for the ECFA is eroding.
A survey of 711 Taiwan adults published by the China-tilting China Times daily Dec. 11 indicated that only 19 percent of voters said they understood the ECFA and revealed that support for the deal had eroded from 51.7 percent on July 31 to 48.0 percent.
Moreover, a poll of 1,071 Taiwan adults released by the pro-green Taiwan Thinktank Sunday showed that 53.0 percent feared that the ECFA would negatively affect their lives compared to 43.1 percent who were not worried, with concern especially intense in southern and eastern Taiwan and among young voters.
Moreover, 62.5 percent said negotiation of a cross-strait ECFA should be deferred until there is an internal consensus in Taiwan, with only 27.3 percent disagreeing, a suggestion that received majority from voters across the political spectrum and was backed by over 60 percent of respondents in all areas except for the greater Taipei region.
Combined with Ma's dismal approval rating of 30.3 percent compared with 65.6 percent disapproving, these finding show that Ma's KMT government has lost the confidence of the majority of Taiwan citizens to negotiate a ECFA with the PRC that would truly safeguard Taiwan's interests and benefit the majority of our people.
The confidence crisis is a direct result of the Ma government's recurrent displays of incompetence, its habitual secretiveness shown through its reliance on the extralegal "black-box" KMT-CCP dialogue, its sell-out of Taiwan's health security in the U.S. beef import protocol and its persistent refusal to enter into any genuine, which is to say open-ended, dialogue with opposition parties or civic forces.
The people's voice
Only the power of Taiwan's people through the ballot box has compelled the Ma government to retreat from its previous position that the ECFA and the financial services memorandum of understanding (MOU) would be handled like other cross-strait pacts according to Article 25 of the cross-strait relations statute and that only portions which required changes to legal code would be subject to legislative approval.
In the wake of the plunging confidence in the Ma and the KMT government and the Dec. 5 elections, Ma has agreed to submit the ECFA to legislative review and now agreed to open debates, including a possible Ma-Tsai debate.
The key issue now is the ground rules.
In our view, a national debate on ECFA will have significance only if it takes place under fair and democratic conditions and if the correct questions are asked and addressed and is not simply another exercise of the KMT's usual top-down "dialogue" designed to avoid substantive discussion but secure acquiescence to a predetermined conclusion.
No fixed games
For over a year, Taiwan citizens have already been bombarded with pollyannaish propaganda that has accented the positive and ignored the risks in the ECFA, including the racist and classist carton strip featuring "Brother Yi" and "Sister Sao" and Pavlovian "contests" requiring citizens eager to gain eligibility for raffles to repeat the "right answers," such as the patently false claims that the ECFA "only concerns economics" and "will not impinge on sovereignty."
Hence, the most important precondition for genuine debate is that Ma and the KMT government first drop the arrogant stance that signing an ECFA with the PRC is a "fixed national policy" and agree to submit any initialled ECFA to both legislative review and passage and final ratification by national citizen referendum.
This position is backed by an overwhelming public consensus, as shown by the Taiwan Thinktank poll, which showed that over 71 percent of respondents, including majorities across the political and regional spectrum, agreed that the ECFA should be subject to the decision of the Taiwan people through national referendum.
Only after the fundamental question of democratic transparency and accountability and only after this issue is resolved will debate on the nuts and bolts of a cross-strait trade pact be meaningful.
Source: Taiwan News Online - Editorial 2009/12/15
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