Monday, September 30, 2013

MaWangMess: Wang wins another round

Jes' restin'.

AFP reports on Ma taking another blow:
Taiwan's parliamentary speaker scored another victory in the battle for his job Monday after the high court upheld a ruling against his party's decision to expel him over claims of influence-peddling.

Earlier this month, the Taipei district court granted Wang Jin-pyng's request for a provisional injunction against the Kuomintang (KMT) party, allowing him to hold his party membership and therefore continue as speaker.

The party, led by President Ma Ying-jeou, appealed the ruling, but the appeal was thrown out by the high court on Monday.
The KMT said it would appeal to the Supreme Court. Apparently a dozen or so KMT legislators have urged Ma not to appeal:
According to KMT legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾), a dozen or so KMT legislators, including Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順), Liao Cheng-ching (廖正井), Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟), Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑), Sun Ta-chien (孫大千) and Chen Ken-te (陳根德), decided to write a letter to President Ma after a gathering held last week to discuss the political situation. “During the gathering, we discussed the recent political turmoil caused by the feud between President Ma and Speaker Wang. A couple of days ago, a taxi driver committed suicide. In a letter he left behind, he wrote that he was disappointed with the government for failing to revive the economy and constantly engaging in political infighting. The death of the taxi driver shocked society. During the gathering, the attendees asked me to take the lead to write a letter to President Ma recommending that the KMT withdraw its interlocutory appeal against Wang in order to put an end to the political infighting so that he could concentrate on reviving the economy.
The latest China Times poll had the President at 19%. Though Speaker Wang has not been charged, the Presidential Office continued to insist that he was guilty:
[Presidential spokesman] Lee stated that President Ma Ying-jeou’s insistence on the independence of the judiciary would never change, nor would the President tolerate the fact that the Legislative Speaker had illegally lobbied the Justice Minister and the chief prosecutor of Taiwan Provincial Prosecutors Office in a court case involving the DPP party whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘).

Lee stated that there was no gray area in the Wang case.
What will President Ma do if the Supremes don't uphold this political assault on the KMT's own Speaker?

Even more deliciously, the Justice Ministry announced a probe of SID chief Huang, a probe which Ma had to make pro forma noises saying he supported. The SID explains all its wiretapping here. Just accidents and mistakes.

I see no way Ma can ever really recover from this train wreck, except by waiting for time to rehabilitate him. But if Ma can do this, what other accidents await? Ma's rigidity and political ineptitude remind me of another President of the ROC, from several decades ago....

MEDIA MOMENT: AFP hilariously reported:
Ma's approval rating had hit a record low of around 9 per cent earlier this year, before rising to more than 21 per cent in a recent poll.
I guess two weeks ago is "earlier this year." Technically.  The protest against Ma was variously reported: "tens of thousands" in Taipei Times, 5500 in WSJ (police estimates).
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11 comments:

Tim Maddog said...

When AFP journamalistically writes:
- - -
Ma's approval rating had hit a record low of around 9 per cent earlier this year, before rising to more than 21 per cent in a recent poll
- - -

… they make it sound like those numbers came from the same poll when, in fact, they didn't. Gee, I wonder where they got that idea from.

I'm also pretty sure that the 9.2% approval is Apple Daily's most recent poll — which would mean that Mr. Ma's 9.2% still stands. Can anyone verify? I don't just want to be "pretty sure."

Tim Maddog

Michael Turton said...

Which poll had him at 21%? TISR's most recent poll has Ma in the teens again. AFP is worse than Xinhua.

Frank said...

Actually the 21.4% is from the latest Apple Daily poll (9/21), while the 9.2% was from ERA TV (9/19).
Still no reason to put them together as if they came from the same pollster.
Latest TISR poll puts Ma's approval at 14.5%, a 1.7 % drop from early September: http://www.tisr.com.tw/?p=3332#more-3332

Anonymous said...

I beleive Ma's 9.2% and 21% ratings are from different polls, which can't be used to claim his rating has increased. This is the trick that KMT or Ma is used to save Ma's face.

Ma used to calling formal President Chen Suei-Ben to step down if Chen has shame when the poll was at 18%. Now Ma's own poll is at 9.2% but wont' step down himself. He needs a poll rating higher than 18% to justify himself.

Shame on Ma! It is a shame Taiwan has a President Ma!

Tim Maddog said...

OK, I mixed up the polls there, but my points still stand: the numbers come from two different polls, so the 9.2% hasn't "ris[en]," and AFP is wrong to imply that it has.

The 21% was Apple Daily's figure. The 9.2% came from Era News (年代新聞).

And with that corrected information I was able to find the answer to my own question. That is indeed Era's latest survey.

Check out the details of Ma's approval in question 8 of the Era News poll here [PDF].

Tim Maddog

Monty61 said...

From an outsider's perspective Taiwan is a joke. The issue isn't Ma, the issue is endemic corruption in the system, and the general populace's apparent aquiesence in this. Ma's ineptitude is political, Wang's corruption is a moral issue.

It seems to me that no-one in Taiwan can step back and see this for what it is - everything needs to be seen with Green or Blue tinted spectacles.

A sorry excuse for a democracy. If you can't deal with your own corrupt politicians, what right have you to criticise the CCP?

Taiwan Echo said...

The latest poll is 14% for Ma. This is done by Taiwan Indicators Survey Research (TISR). The guy in charge is the one who was kicked out from 遠見 after the polls he carried out in 遠見 "didn't fit the standard" of Ma's 2012 presidential campaign.

Earlier (this is the real "earlier"), after Ma got a 9.2% (9-2-consensus ?) from Apple and a 11% from TVBS, Ma called the high level executives/editors of several blue media (newspaper and TV) to "have a talk". China Times is among one of them.

Immediately following that, Ma's approval rate published by those media jumped up to 20~21%. The AFP simply play the role of Ma's propaganda agency.

Taiwan Echo said...

Tim, I guess the real poll would be somewhere between 10~17%.

Btw, one of the two most dangerous men by Ma's side, 陳長文, (another one is 金溥聰), came out to suggest a overthrow of cabinet by the legislators. This has been one of most favorable moves of the green camp. So all the green politicians and scholars, netters ... etc, jump up to voice agreement on this once-in-a-lifetime cooperation between green and blue.

Since overthrowing the cabinet gives the President the right to dismiss the congress, the green camp essentially hands over Ma a rightful way to clean out Wang's power, with all pro-Wang legislators as the bonus.

It will be followed by a re-election of legislators, in which those who lost power because of the DPP's stupid move will become the DPP's enemy.

What a shame.

Anonymous said...

Who, how, length conducted the poll? All I know is the results just show up, and I never felt the surveys around me.

Anonymous said...

@monty61 ~ well said especially: "general populace's apparent acquiescence"...

If the people here were just not so damn shortsighted and selfish, there would be progress.

All we have now is a bunch of pro-China politicians, who keep getting reelected, doing their best to make Taiwan a province of China. Big biz from China is going to suck Taiwan dry economically. Goodbye to all the banks, the monetary system, gold, etc. I only wish more people would wake up, but I think it is too late. President Lein is going follow in his grandfather's footsteps.

Anonymous said...

Add (sorry OT):
Being inquisitive, I took a quick look at Lein Chan's wiki page. At the bottom is this paragraph. (MT probably discussed this in the past, I've been busy and missed it):

"In February 2013, Lien visited Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping, the newly elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of China. Lien pronounced a new "16-character principle" for cross-strait relations, which are one China (一個中國), cross-strait peace (兩岸和平), mutually beneficial integration (互利融合) and rejuvenation of the Chinese nation (振興中華).[3] This was unpopular and 'controversial' in Taiwan and criticized for being 'treacherous' to the Taiwanese people, and President Ma has distanced from this statement by saying this is 'absolutely Mr. Lien’s personal view.'"


>>It is scary to think Sean Lien is being groomed by the KMT to be the next president. I thought the unification would take place during Ma's term (and it still may if global banking implodes), but it will probably be Sean who flushes the toilet. fyi: here is the article that appeared in the TT way back in 2004 about Lien Heng.