[1613] Of Mr. Ma has a herculean task

May 20 will be the day the new Taiwan President gets sworn in.

While I am an avid admirer of Mr. Ma, I think he is facing an impossible task ahead of him.

For eight years, this country had laid stagnant due to political infightings while the government that was more interested in advancing its political agenda of Not Part of China than taking care of its own people. National pride and maintaining the dignity of the country is important, but it is nothing compare to improving the living standard of your own people and developing the economy.

Most casual outside observers would look at the election result and ask, “So, are 60% of the Taiwanese people pro-reunification?” These people most likely drew the same conclusion in 2000 and again in 2004. While it is true that the China topic has always been hotly debated in all the presidential elections, Taiwanese people ultimately cast their vote based on the issues that concerns them the most: it’s the economy, stupid!

In 2000, KMT was the poster child of corruption and ineffective government. It was essentially living off its past glory and getting out of touch with the people. DPP meanwhile was the fresh alternative to KMT and the candidate at that time was a charismatic leader who is vocal about changes, getting rid of corruption and running a government that is more for the people. DPP’s Chen Shui-bian won that election.

DPP did not do a fantastic job during its term. The opposition however was just as pathetic and the next 4 long years turned out to be grudge match between the two sides. Essentially, the same factors that contributed to the defeat of KMT in 2000 were still applicable in 2004. While you can always blame the shooting scandal for the upset, KMT wouldn’t have gotten a pretty win, and on hindsight, had KMT won that election, it will just mean reverting back to the old way of doing things as KMT offered the same deal to voters as they did 4 years previously.

This time around though, KMT, at least on surface, have more young blood surfacing to the front. While many would argue that the old faces had merely moved into the dark acting as puppet masters, this at least offers some progress. So, to a lot of people, the 2008 election may not be an indication of how well KMT had transformed, but more of how bad a job DPP had done over the last 8 years and how quickly it had followed in the footstep of the “old” KMT. Over the last 8 years, we saw corrupt officials, we saw ineffective government, we saw policies that ignored the need of the people and we saw Taiwan continued to lose its competitiveness in the global economy.

So by electing Mr. Ma into the office, voters have extremely high (and even unrealistic) expectation of him. He will need to catch up on what was not done over the last 2 terms, he will need to grow the Taiwanese economy at the backdrop of a possible global recession, he will need to convince people that there are no puppet masters in the dark and he can control the different factions in his own party and ultimately, he is the leader that will take Taiwan back onto the right track. And yes, he also needs to protect Taiwan from the 1,400 missiles aimed at the island right now.

LIU YEN LIN, the author, is a Taiwanese living in Singapore. He is an economics and political science graduate of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.