Thursday January 03, by Jerome F. Keating
Ph.D.

Does Ma Ying-joke know what time it is? Does he even know where his party is?
Shortly after Ma promised Taiwan citizens that he would definitely vote on the
two anti-corruption referendum ballots in the up-coming election, his party, the
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), announced that it would boycott the
referendums. Who is in charge here? It certainly isn't Ma Ying-joke.

Ma has already proven that he cannot deliver. When he became Chairman of the
KMT in 2005, on two crucial issues, he made two clear promises to the nation.
First he would sell off the stolen assets that the KMT had illegally gotten;
second he would get the pan-blue dominated legislature (yes the very legislature
that his party controlled) to pass the nation's arms budget. On the first
promise, he did sell off a few of the many properties of the KMT but he did not
give the money back to the people, instead he put it in the KMT coffers. I have
already written about this under the caption "Is selling and keeping still not
stealing?" So much for promise number one. As for the second promise, again Ma
did not deliver. A year and a half after his promise when Ma was indicted for
corruption, the KMT dominated legislature had still not approved any arms
budget. After Ma resigned as KMT chairman, the legislature under Wang Jyn-ping
finally did approve a miniscule arms budget for the nation. In both crucial
cases Ma did not deliver.

When Ma Ying-joke was Mayor of Taipei, the gossip that made the rounds of
city hall was that you could never know what Ma's position was on anything; it
always depended on who the last person was that he talked to. In the past year
as Ma has been on the campaign trail this still proves true. Like a wind sock
vacillating in cross winds, the namby-pamby man who feels obligated to try and
please everyone, so rapidly changes his positions and his words with each new
group that he talks to that one grows dizzy listening to him. Would you want
this man as your leader? More will follow.