President Ma Ying-jeou was elected to a second four-year term as Taiwan’s president, giving him a renewed mandate to press for closer ties with China that have eased decades-old tensions across the Taiwan Strait.
Ma, the 61-year-old leader of the ruling Kuomintang Party, defeated challenger Tsai Ing-wen, the Democratic Progressive Party chairwoman, by 51.6 percent to 45.6 percent, with all the votes tallied, the Central Election Commission reported on its website. The commission said 74.4 percent of Taiwan’s 18 million eligible voters cast ballots.
“This isn’t a personal victory, this is a victory for the Taiwan people,” Ma said at a rain-soaked victory rally in Taipei late yesterday. “The people have approved our efforts to shelve disputes and strive for peace across the Taiwan Strait.”
Ma’s victory is an affirmation of his effort to improve Taiwan’s relationship with China after decades of strained ties under his DPP predecessor and previous Kuomintang governments. A stable cross-strait relationship may also benefit U.S.-China ties as Washington seeks help from the leadership in Beijing to contain the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea.
No Chinese leader could acknowledge Ma’s status as ROC president, because to do so would be to accept that a separate China exists alongside the People’s Republic. That violates the so-called “one-China policy,” the central canon of Beijing’s approach to Taiwan for the past 62 years.
In its first reaction to Ma’s victory, China’s official Xinhua News Agency took a positive tone, reflecting Beijing’s view that he was a far better choice than challenger Tsai Ing-wen, whose party maintains its theoretical support for an independent Taiwan.
“The results of the elections have indicated that the peaceful development of the cross-strait relations is a correct path and has been widely recognized by the Taiwan people,” Xinhua said.
Although the Nationalists formally advocate unification between the sides, they reject the idea of doing so under mainland communist rule and have decisively sidelined the issue in favor of maintaining the status quo.
Chao Chun-shan, a China expert at Taipei’s Tamkang University, said that Hu’s imminent departure makes it unlikely that Beijing will press Ma to make a political deal anytime soon. If a Taiwan political gambit failed, Hu’s successors could come off looking bad while they are still in the relatively vulnerable position of just beginning to consolidate their power, Chao said.
“I don’t think there is room for talks on a political deal in (Ma’s) second term.” Chao said. “Economics is the first priority.”
There is considerable appetite in Taiwan for pursuing the kind of economic deals that Ma brought to fruition during his first term. Under his leadership Taiwan increased the number of direct mainland China flights, opened itself to large numbers of free-spending Chinese tourists and cut tariffs on scores on Taiwanese exports to the mainland.
That contrasts sharply with a strong local resistance to engaging China politically, out of fear that any deal could undermine the island’s hard-won democratic freedoms. Polls over the last 10 years have shown that no more than 10 percent of Taiwanese favor union with the mainland, with most of the rest supporting an open-ended continuation of Taiwan’s de facto independence.
Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, 马英九,Mǎ Yīngjiǔ; born July 13, 1950 is the current President of the Republic of China (Taiwan), and the Chairman of the Kuomintang Party, also known as the Chinese Nationalist Party. He formerly served as Justice Minister from 1993 to 1996, Mayor of Taipei from 1998 to 2006, and Chairman of the Kuomintang (KMT) from 2005 to 2007. Ma was elected Mayor of Taipei in 1998 and re-elected in 2002. He was elected Chairman of the Kuomintang on July 16, 2005. He announced his resignation on February 13, 2007, after being indicted by the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office on charges of misuse of mayoral funds during his tenure as the mayor of Taipei;[1] he was later cleared of all charges. Ma subsequently won the presidency by 58.45% of the popular vote in the presidential election of 2008. He was sworn into office as president on May 20, 2008, and sworn in as the Chairman of the Kuomintang on October 17, 2009.
While often nicknamed as "Teflon pot" for his extreme preservation of personal image, Ma was nonetheless caught in some political controversies. A series of mishaps during his tenure as the mayor of Taipei, including the administration problems that enlarged the extent of the Typhoon Nari (納莉風災),[38] the shutdown of Hoping Hospital (和平封院事件),[39] the Phosgene Incident (捷運光氣事件), the Scalping Incident (捷運扯頭皮事件) and the Human Ball Scandal (邱小妹人球事件), impaired Ma's reputation. However, Ma maneuvered through these incidents relatively unscathed.
One of Ma's most satisfactory mayoral construction was the Maokong Gondola. However, the frequent breakdown of the gondola earned the residents' distrust of the new transportation system. One poll showed only 14% of the Taipei City residents were satisfied with it,[41] and it even led to protests. The Taiwan Environmental Information Center (台灣環境資訊協會) states that the choice to use a gondola lift intended for temperate zones in a tropical zone shows the failure of the Taipei City government led by Ma.
Ma Ying-jeou was born in Kwong Wah Hospital in Kowloon, Hong Kong on 13 July 1950, He is of Hakka ancestry, originating from Hunan Province of China. In a family of five children, Ma was the only son.
Ma earned his LL.B. from National Taiwan University in 1972. He pursued further studies in the United States, first earning an LL.M. from New York University Law School in 1976 and then an S.J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1981.
After receiving his LL.M., Ma worked as an associate for a Wall Street law firm in New York and as a legal consultant for a major bank in Massachusetts before completing his doctoral studies. In 1981, Ma returned to Taiwan and started working for President Chiang Ching-kuo.
In February 2006, while visiting Europe, Ma said that although he and the KMT favor eventual reunification, the KMT respects the opinions of Taiwanese people and independence is a choice for the people of Taiwan. This caused widespread criticism within the party and from mainland China. In a December 2005 Newsweek International interview, when asked about unification, Ma stated that "for our party, the eventual goal is reunification, but we don't have a timetable", explaining that he meant it was a choice for Taiwan, but also a choice for the Chinese KMT.[126] Perhaps to deflect heavy criticism from the Pan-Green Coalition, the KMT later made an advertisement in the Liberty Times recognizing that independence is an option for the Taiwanese people. Wang Jin-pyng praised Ma for the policy shift, since Wang himself made a similar statement during the 2004 election, but James Soong said he was "shocked" and Lien Chan said he was never consulted. This event actually won some welcome voices from Southern Taiwan, where voters customarily favor the Pan-Green Coalition. One top KMT official said "we might as well let the measles out now so that we will be immune to it when election year comes close, because reunification or independence can be a hot topic by then.
Ma clarified later that the current KMT policy of retaining the status quo has not changed and has reiterated this position several times; further, he has also reiterated his party's support of the one-China policy. Ma has defined the status quo as the "Five No's." During a visit to the United States in March 2006, he proposed a "proactive" approach to cross-strait relations which he called the "Five Do's."
In June 2009, the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 in Beijing, a leader of the Chinese democracy movement and then student leader Wang Dan (Chinese: 王丹) visited Taiwan, as in previous years, to meet with Ma about human rights and democracy in China. However, Ma postponed the appointment three times and eventually cancelled the appointment with Wang. In a press meeting with DPP Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen, Wang Dan spoke of how it has become more difficult to see "President Ma" in comparison to "Mayor Ma of Taipei City." Wang cited that he understand the importance of the cross strait relationship to Taiwan's economy but also stated that a confident government should have nothing to be afraid of. [129] Prior to his election as President, Ma was known to be a very vocal supporter of the Chinese democracy movement and had stated that unless Beijing admitted their wrongdoings at Tiananman Square Protests, there would be no talks about reunification.
After his success in the presidential election, Ma Ying-jeou said he had no immediate plans to visit mainland China and would work to fulfill his campaign pledge to improve relations with mainland China, starting direct charter flights, allowing mainland Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan and lifting the ROC's legislative restrictions on the financial sector to invest in mainland China.[131]
Since then, Ma Ying-jeou has repeatedly mentioned the "1992 Consensus" as the existing basis for constructive dialogue and exchange between Mainland China and Taiwan. On 12 April 2008, then Vice-President-elect Vincent Siew formally met with Hu Jintao at the Boao Forum in Hainan, China.
