By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) yesterday urged the public to take to the streets on May 20 to protest what it called President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) incompetence, and especially against the government’s controversial proposal of “one country, two areas” (一國兩區).
Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) made the proposal during a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in Beijing on Thursday.
While the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has also blasted the proposal, it is not clear whether it would join the protest, which will be timed to coincide with Ma’s inauguration for his second and final presidential term.
Ma has shown his “incompetence” through a series of unpopular and harmful policies, including his handling of the ban on US beef imports containing ractopamine, the government’s alleged cover-up of bird flu outbreaks and rising commodity, tuition, water and gasoline prices, TSU Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) said.
However, the politically sensitive “one country, two areas” proposal was Ma’s worst blunder, Huang said, as it was an act of self-belittlement, as well as a step toward unification.
Huang said he would visit various civic groups and solicit their support for the protest.
The proposal is a guise for China’s “one country, two systems,” which is very unpopular among Taiwanese, Huang said.
“It seems to me that Ma thinks he can do anything he wants after winning a second term,” he said.
The proposal has jeopardized Taiwan’s sovereignty and goes against mainstream public opinion, DPP spokesperson Lin Yu-chang (林右昌) told a press conference yesterday.
Lin stopped short of saying that the party would hold or participate in a protest, but said that the DPP “would do something” about Ma’s hasty and unwise decision, despite its insistence that Taiwan’s future should be decided by its 23 million people.
On Sunday, former Tainan county commissioner Su Huan-chih (蘇煥智) of the DPP also called for a mass protest on May 20 against the proposal. Pig farmers are also planning a march that day to protest Ma’s policy on US meat imports.