After looking at Ma's performance for the past 400 or so days as president, IMO, there is little hope of Taiwan actually improving much over the next few years. Taiwan will be lucky just to stay alive. Sure, the economy will start to recover eventually in the next few years, but the fundamental economic problem will not be solved. Problems in other areas will also surface. If Ma gets re-elected, it will be a total nightmare, but that might actually become a reality.
Also, looking at what Ma did in Taipei you wonder what kind of long lasting negative effects Ma will leave in Taiwan in the next few years. If Taiwan is lucky, and Ma doesn't get re-elected, the next President and his/her team will still face some huge challenges. Some already exist but for sure cannot be solved by Ma, some I suspect Ma will leave behind:
Judiciary System Reform
As shown by the Chen case, the Judiciary system has some huge problems both in its system and people. The system, from my understanding, is resemblance to German Nazi's system. It gives too much power to the judge and prosecutors etc. I am no expert, but I know a lot of it does not make any sense, especially if you comparing it with the courts in the US or UK. A lot of the people under the system is also problematic. The prosecutors leaking confidential information to the media, judges mocking the accused, unreasonable/unnecessary detention, too much KMT influence inside are all big problems.
The reform I imagine will take a long time and will face very stiff opposition, but it has to start somewhere now. First, the system has to be changed gradually, and the law education system has to be adjusted.
National Defense
Recently a lot of news seem to show some deterioration of the military both in hardware and software. The maintenance, training and the morale seem to be down. Combining this with Ma's current policy, it is not hard to imagine in the next few years the military would be in a poor state. The next government I imagine will face huge challenge in this area, and will need to pay a lot of attention to it.
Also, as the recent Japanese defense white paper mentioned, Taiwan's military has no counter to China's short range ballistic missiles etc. This problems will need to be addressed sooner or later...and better sooner than later.
Education
Some small improvement has been made during Chen's time but really not even near enough. IMO in a lot of area the education system is still tightly controlled by the KMT.
Economy
I cannot think of any thing solid on this one, and I doubt there are a lot of people out there that can actually propose a good economic strategy etc. The only people that are fully confident in their economic strategy are those KMT BShitters that keep saying invest in China. I do not know where their "confidence" come from, but I know those kind of policies are wrong, as been shown in the past decade, after Taiwan starts to pour money into China.
Basically, I think a lot of pan green people know what is not good, but they are not sure of what is good, regarding this topic. For sure, there are a few things that need to be achieved:
- Lower Unemployment Rate: We have to be careful about what kind of unemployment, because different unemployment means different things. For sure though the unemployment rate is rising and right now it is ridiculously high (for Taiwan) comparing to neighboring countries like Singapore, Japan and South Korea etc. The most problematic unemployment is IMO Structural Unemployment. Actually this part is also related to the education problem.
- Attracting Investment into Taiwan: How to retain and encourage people inside and outside Taiwan to invest in Taiwan is a big question. Right now there are still huge tendency for people to throw their money into China instead of invest in Taiwan. The fundamental cause has to be found, and policy that encourage investment in Taiwan has to be formed.
Those problems might even be underestimations...because there is a chance that Ma will do something catastrophic to Taiwan's economy in the next few years (signing ECFA might, for example). Given the lousy jobs he did when he was a mayor...this is actually a likely scenario.
Conclusion
In any case...even if Ma will not get re-elected, I think the next government will have a real hot potato in its hand.
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