Any momentum Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜) gained after the Tsai administration cried wolf about a Chinese missile flying over Taiwan on Tuesday was lost the next day when former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) sat down for a controversial interview with DW.
This was deliberate. Ma and the Chinese Communist Party believe Hou will not win Saturday’s election. Hou and KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) are not who they want leading the KMT in 2024. The CCP wants a strong pro-China public figure it can work with, and Ma — whose vanity is well known and whose ego has been underestimated — thinks he’s that person. Ensure Hou does as poorly as possible in the election, and it makes it that much easier for Ma to step in.
In the DW interview, Ma said it would be futile for Taiwan to try to defend itself; China is too strong. He said unification with China was “acceptable to Taiwan.” He said Taiwan had to “trust” Xi Jinping. He attempted to sow doubt over America’s reliability as an ally.
Hou went around on Thursday doing damage control, saying he would “not touch on the unification issue during my presidency” and emphasizing that he disagreed with Ma on key cross-strait issues. But the damage was done.
This is not the first time Ma has publicly inserted himself into the 2024 presidential election. In November, he put himself in the middle of farcical negotiations to bring about a joint TPP-KMT ticket. Those failed, in part because Ma went hard on Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) behind closed doors and made it clear to everyone in the room that he, not Hou or Ko, was the one calling the shots.
Look for Ma to emerge after the elections as China’s man in Taiwan, probably at first on the down-low. This will be dangerous if Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Lai Ching-te (賴清德) gets less than 45 percent of the vote. Ma will likely have a KMT-run legislature with Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) as speaker, and there’s nothing to stop him from going to China, coming back with a deal and then saying the DPP is unreasonable for not accepting China’s terms when Lai lacks a mandate and Beijing will not do business with him.
What’s in it for Ma? He’s 73 years old. He’s thinking of his legacy. He wants to be remembered as the person who returned Taiwan to the motherland. And maybe he sees himself running Taiwan again, this time as warden of the world’s largest open-air reeducation camp.
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