President Ma Ying-jeou's attendance at last Wednesday's inauguration of Honduran President Porifino Lubo of the conservative National Party of Honduras sullied the reputation of Taiwan's hard-won democracy and marked a grave diplomatic misjudgement.
Ma, who is concurrently chairman of the rightist ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), endorsed as "democratic" the new Honduran government, which was created by general elections held by a repressive "interim" regime formed in the wake of the coup against former president Jose Manuel Zelaya of the Honduran Liberal Party last June 28 after the Liberal Party president proposed constitutional reforms that could open the Honduran political system to wider popular participation.