Calling President-elect Ma a pragmatic candidate is naïve and oversimplifying the story. Ma is well known for playing word games to gain popularity. He is willing to say just anything to please the public and avoid responsibility. He does not have to worry about the mass media because of the existence of a mass system of covering up for individual interests in the KMT/Chinese tradition. He has demonstrated willing-ness to switch directions at any point of time and reverse what he said before. I would not count on his words and expect any achievement from him.
His father commanded and trained him to become a President. Now he has achieved a life-time goal and there is nothing left for him to strive as long as he con-tinue to feed the needy in his political system all who has a part of his presidency, in-cluding the mass media, the government workers, the personnel in the judicial, the law-enforcing and the banking system, the teachers in all public schools, etc. This is a very easy task for him because he only needs to follow what the KMT has been doing in the last 90+ years and the general public in Taiwan is very familiar with the schemes. The majority of people growing up in Taiwan knows and takes advantage of the tricks of KMT ruling. They are willing to play the games to receive some immedi-ate satisfaction and, at the same time, avoid hassles in return.
The ultimate goal of KMT and their individual members is individual gains from the political machine. This is evidenced in the methods of their recruitment. This so-called political party has never had policy or strategy for a long-running nation. The only agenda of the party is survival and individual profit in the survival games. The party capitalizes on the survival mode of the country without caring for the coun-try or the global world as a unit. Truth, the least important piece in their board games, has been and will be sacrificed as needed.
The Politics of Practical Nostalgia
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A successful economic answer to the pressures of globalization was central to Thaksin's rise and helps explain his return. During his five-year term the economy boomed, rural growth spiked and Thailand became the only country in Asia to narrow its rich-poor gap. His Thai Rak Thai party gained popularity by spending heavily on infrastructure and the poor, including village-level development programs and nearly free health care, yet keeping Thailand open to foreign investors and aggressively promoting trade. Then came the junta, which managed in a few short months to scare off foreign investors and alienate rural Thais by advocating quasi-Buddhist "efficiency economics" that emphasized stability over growth. Under the generals, Thailand grew by just 4.8 percent last year. Now Samak Sundaravej, the new prime minister—who is widely seen as a Thaksin proxy—has approved $635 million in new funding for villages and a $1.3 billion tax-cut package to boost the sluggish economy. Thaksin inspires such personal loyalty that Bangkok cabby Dogruk Komning, 26, who saw business plummet under the junta, says he voted for Samak even though he feared it might lead to another coup.
It's too soon to tell whether the rise of the popular pragmatists is a paradigm shift or a passing fad. A lot depends on whether the new leaders can deliver. With the U.S. economy entering what could be a serious recession, Asia's richer economies have particular cause for concern. Their strategies, mixing free-market pragmatism with the old Asian impulse to command economic growth, suggest some confusion about how to grow fast.
What the new leaders aren't asking is whether the old rates are still realistic. The richest economies typically can't grow faster than 3 percent for sustained periods without overheating. With average incomes now exceeding $15,000—not matching Japan but not poor either—South Korea and Taiwan may find that 5 percent is their new speed limit. With average incomes of only $6,150 and $3,400, respectively, Malaysia and Thailand will likely find it easier to hit 7 percent or more. But as Deans points out, the growing power of global markets means "new state leaders have fewer levers they can pull, [and] it's much harder to manage economies than it used to be." Particularly when voters expect past performance to predict future results.
With Jaimie Seaton in Bangkok and B. J. Lee in Seoul
© 2008
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