Today it’s finally time for Taiwan to elect a new president! In the past week the relation with China has played a major role in the discussion between the candidates, which was also the case in the last election given the development in Hong Kong at the time.
As Niklas ”@KluddNiklas” Eriksson shows in his latest cartoon here on Kinamedia, this time around a comment from influential former President Ma Ying-jeou this week got a lot of attention.
Ma is known for his ambition to stick to the 1992 consensus, stating that Taiwan and China is the same country, even as two Chairmans of his party Kuomintang (KMT) has shown signs of wanting to reevaluate this issue.
In an interview with German broadcaster Deutsche Welle this Wednesday, Ma Ying-jeou went one step further, saying that Taiwan ”have to trust” Xi Jinping in cross-strait relations.
Not only are many voters disagreeing with this assessment. Even leading figures within the Kuomintang distanced themselves from Ma’s comments, that also seemed to result in him not being invited to speak at the KMT final election rally in Taipei yesterday.
Will Ma Ying-jeou’s appeal to trust Xi Jinping impact KMT’s chances to win back the presidency from the Democratic Progressive Party? We will know already later tonight!
The above cartoon can be viewed in full size here.
A full collection of KluddNiklas’ works for Kinamedia can be seen via this link.