Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) said yesterday that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had instructed government agencies to enhance communication with middle and low-income-earners and small and medium-sized enterprises concerning the government’s proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China.
The government has also resolved to make extra efforts to explain the ECFA to people in central and southern Taiwan, she said.
“[The communication will include] details about ECFA negotiations and explain why [the government] must push the ECFA, including the agreement’s significance and importance for Taiwan,” Lai said. “We will communicate to the public using clear language.”
It seems that the Government wishes to present opposition to ECFA as coming principally from middle and low income earners, SMEs and people in central and southern Taiwan. This serves two purposes: 1) it sends out a stigmatising signal that the groups above are acting out of a misguided and misinformed sense of opposition, 2) identifies to those not in this group that the only problem lies with these groups and not ECFA itself and 3) implies that people in Northern and Eastern Taiwan as well as high income earners and large enterprises all support ECFA. Talk about divide and rule.
But as EVA pointed out to me, in fact the people Ma identified as 'needing more education' actually form a majority of all citizens since Taiwan's economic base and structure of income is still dominated by SMEs and medium to low income earners.
Making an extra effort to explain ECFA will not really help since the explanation, as evidence by the last paragraph in the quote above, will not include any significant information about ECFA's content or likely negative outcomes. It only talks about explaining some more about the negotiations and why the Government must push for the ECFA. In short, how does this Government try to win hearts and minds?: by making an extra effort to repeat what it has said ad nausea since the ECFA idea first leaked out. The mantra is "say it often enough and they will believe it".
I hope Taiwanese for their part continue to be sceptical about ECFA, demand real legislative oversight that even KMT Legislative Yuan Speaker Wang is now angling for, and press the Government to reveal the nuts and bolts of the agreement and its likely negative as well as positive outcomes.
