Ma Ying Jeou’s Response to Frank Hsieh’s Request to Hold a Debate on Joining the UN

Ma Ying Jeou’s Response to Frank Hsieh’s Request
to Hold a Debate on Joining the UN

Source: Ma Ying-jeou Office

October 12, 2007

After hearing the remarks in the press conference held by Mr. Frank Hsieh, following 13 days of ‘self-imprisonment’, I felt extremely disappointed. According to Hsieh’s logic, the people of Taiwan should focus their attention on whether our national title is, ‘Republic of Taiwan’ or ‘Republic of China’, rather than concentrating on how to revitalize our economy.

For Mr. Hsieh, our economy, high unemployment rates, depletion of national assets, education of our children, and the 4,000 people who commit suicide per year do not mean a thing. Only ‘Republic of Taiwan’ matters.

It seems that Mr. Hsieh has not seen the figures released by many independent institutions during the period of his self-imprisonment. After the DPP came to power, the cargo ranking of Kaohsiung Port fell from third to sixth place, and now it ranks only in eighth place. According to Standard & Poor’s analysis, Taiwan and post-military coup Fiji, are the only two countries with negative country outlooks (Local and Regional Government Ratings, LRG) among the 22 Asian countries, all others receiving either positive or stable outlooks. The transparency of Kaohsiung City ranks in last place among cities in Taiwan and suffers from the highest unemployment rates, according to Transparency International- Taiwan.

Mr Hsieh, as the former premier and former Kaohsiung City mayor, are you not aware of these facts?

All I want to tell Mr. Hsieh is that every opinion poll I have seen and the voices of the grassroots that I have heard all indicate the public desire that the government focus on the economy, not ‘Republic of Taiwan’. Mr. Hsieh is out of touch with the grassroots.

I would like to remind Mr. Hsieh of the slogan widely used during Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 Presidential campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Mr. Hsieh, please shift your attention back to the economy. As for Mr. Hsieh’s election tactic of disregarding the economy, my response is “The DPP has been in power for eight years. If you want to have a debate, we should first debate the economy.”

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