A few weeks ago, the China Post suggested that the KMT could spend the next two years toppling premier after premier, cabinet after cabinet. The notion that the KMT could do this repeatedly and not eventually be punished by the voters seemed absurd to me. Fooling all the people all the time, and all of that.
So it came as a bit of a surprise when the China Post ran up the white flag on a cabinet non-confidence vote earlier this week:
The recall campaign was a bad play from the very beginning. Ma Ying-jeou, chairman of the Kuomintang who demanded President Chen to resign but didn’t want to recall him, was forced by the hawks within the opposition party* to join in the [presidential impeachment] campaign James Soong had launched…
Then…the Kuomintang started to collect the signatures of at least eight million eligible voters who want the president to step down.
That’s significant because at least 8 million voters would have to give Chen the thumbs down in a referendum for a recall to be sucessful. A formal referendum would be unnecessary were Chen to resign after being presented with a non-binding petition showing 8 million would vote for his ouster.
Although [Ma] claims seven out of every ten voters wish the president would quit, the public has responded very coolly to the collection of signatures — less than one million signatures collected so far. [I believe the number was about half a million as of Monday – The Foreigner] The tide seems turning in President Chen’s favor since Ma decided to join in the fray.
Fortunately, the bad play may come to an end with the lawmakers voting on the recall motion…Please do not go on trying to impeach the president, though he deserves a recall. Nor should a no confidence vote on Premier Su Tseng-chang be initiated, for the Cabinet may be toppled but the president will remain unscathed. Should Ma decide instead to pursue the anti-Chen drive to the end, Taiwan would see its political chaos worse confounded. [Emphasis added]
Thus reason slowly reasserts itself. But of course, that’s just at one newspaper. What about within the legislative ranks of the KMT itself?
Some Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators yesterday urged People First People (PFP) Chairman James Soong (
宋楚瑜) to abandon a plan to push for a motion to topple the Cabinet, saying that it might damage KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou ( 馬英九). "Ma has been raped by Soong one time. I appeal to Soong not to rape Ma again," KMT Legislator Chang Sho-wen (張碩文) said, referring to when Ma swapped his initial hesitation regarding the [presidential] recall motion to become its supporter, because of pressure from pan-blue camp leaders.
Ma raped by Soong? Eww, tone it down, fellas. Led around the nose, maybe, but not raped.
"The Cabinet’s dissolution will cause social turmoil and influence economic performance, and the KMT will be blamed for all this," [Chang] said.
Chang may be wrong about the last part. Maybe the KMT can avoid the blame – this time. Maybe they can get away with toppling one cabinet, maybe even two. But voters aren’t stupid, and the KMT can’t keep doing that with impunity for the next two years. So the China Post‘s latest position is the correct one: At the end of the day, Chen will still be standing, and the KMT is gonna look mighty impotent if it insists on imitating the gang that can’t shoot straight.
* Ma was also pressured by anti-Chen media figures, as evidenced by this piece that all but questioned his manhood for not supporting the impeachment drive.