Ma Ying-jeou, agonist

August 8, a lucky number for the superstitious, turned out to be the darkest day in Ma's political life. It could spell the end of a budding “Ma Ying-jeou era” — a period of hope for cross-strait peace and prosperity after two decades of confrontation with mainland China. He was swept into the country's highest office 17 months ago with a 58 percent popular vote, thanks to voters' discontent with the policies and corruption of his predecessor, Chen Shui-bian, now behind bars on charges of corruption.

Few in 2008 would have imagined that Ma would be in political hot water so soon and so deep, especially in view of his initial successes in improving ties with mainland China. Direct transport links have been established for the first time since 1949, and mainland tourists have flocked to Taiwan in droves since travel bans against mainland visitors were lifted. Taiwan was allowed to attend the World Health Assembly for the first time since 1971. The nascent detente promises the blossoming of cross-strait economic and even political relations.

But Morakot changed all that, much like Hurricane Katrina altered George W. Bush's presidency in 2005. People began to feel angry and betrayed. And they were justified to be furious. The Bush administration, like Ma's team, was slow, insensitive and disorganized in responding to the catastrophe.

When Bush flew over Louisiana in Air Force One many days after Katrina destroyed New Orleans, he did not order the plane to land to take a closer look. Ma, when visiting a wrecked village in Kaohsiung County last Saturday, brushed off a request from a village chief to visit a hamlet which was hit hard, to the disappointment and fury of many victims. “Where was his empathy?” many asked aloud. Candidate Ma said during his campaign that he would always “agonize over the agony of the people.” Now, the public was seeing a president divorced from the people and insulated from their suffering.

So disappointing was the government's response to the killer typhoon that even Ma's own comrades could not maintain silence. Outspoken lawmaker Hung Hsiu-chu of “little pepper” fame said she was reluctant to use words like “zombie” and “cold- bloodedness” to describe the Cabinet of Premier Liu Chao-shiuan, for fear of gladdening the opposition, but she said bluntly that Ma may well forget about 2012 if he insists on doing nothing about shuffling the feckless Cabinet and letting some heads roll.

This, inevitably, brought to mind what George W. Bush did in 2005 after Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in August 2005, killing more than 1,800 people and causing property loss in excess of US$100 billion, the costliest storm in U.S. history. When the outraged public and Congress demanded the resignation of Mike Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Bush gave his protege a pat on the back: “Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.” Since then, “heckuva job” has become sarcastic slang for a bungled job.

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