Ma Ying-jeou faces 'confidence crisis'

If he is to survive the crisis, due largely to his own blunders and missteps, he will have to learn how to lead and govern. He will need to have the courage to make hard choices. He must act as a leader elected to lead with an overwhelming mandate, just like Franklin D. Roosevelt did in the 30s when he sold his New Deal to Americans in spite of vigorous opposition from the Republicans.

In just a month, President Ma's sterling political credit has gone bankrupt, or near-bankrupt. Now he is viewed with suspicion by his supporters and opponents alike. On the other side of the Taiwan Strait, his image as a responsible politician was irreparably damaged by breaching a promise of strengthening mutual confidence. Yet it is too early to write the political obituary for Ma — a clean and incorruptible public servant of “teflon” fame. It would be not hard for him to bounce back if he could learn from his mistakes and to right the wrong. Voters, after all, are forgetful and forgiving. But there are conditions for that to happen.

First, he must admit, openly and sincerely, that he has blundered, and he is determined to redeem himself with concrete action. The first sign of evidence is the much-awaited Cabinet reshuffle this week. Is Ma able to become Taiwan's Lee Myung-Bak, who has just installed a new prime minister who was his bitter critic? Or is he still inclined to use his “own men” of like-minded bureaucrats whose incompetence and insensitivity were fully exposed during Typhoon Morakot last month?

What has happened to Ma over the past month fits an old saying that “fortune rarely smiles on you twice; but misfortune never visits only once.” The once popular president has suffered a double whammy since Aug. 8 — from Typhoon Morakot and a subsequent whirlwind brought about by the Dalai Lama. While Morakot was a natural disaster that hit south Taiwan physically, “whirlwind Dalai” was a political catastrophe that has shattered the fragile cross-strait ties cultivated painstakingly by Ma.

Many believe that Ma would be a good “peace-time president,” who would easily win a second term in 2012 for a number of obvious reasons. First, his predecessor Chen Shui-bian is now behind bars for alleged corruption and Chen's separatist Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has been in disarray since its debacle in the 2008 presidential election. Second, Ma's policy success in improving ties with mainland China has won accolades at home and abroad. Peaceful co-existence and co-prosperity between the two long-time rivals have yielded tangible and intangible results — direct transport links between Taiwan and the mainland, for instance, have been established. Economic, cultural and even political relations are being strengthened.

Ma's approval ratings had been high until the onslaught of Morakot, which brought Taiwan's worst floods in half a century, that exposed the shocking incompetence of Ma's administration and himself. They looked callous, lazy, flat-footed and worst of all, lacking empathy. Suddenly, people saw the emperor without clothes. In no time, Ma has fallen from the clouds down to the ground, with his halo gone.

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