In any Western analysis of Asian affairs, I’m always a bit suspicious of over-emphasis on cultural differences. People are people, and concentrating on stereotyped differences can often confuse the issue. In that light, I am not going to claim that the behaviour of the losers of the KMT election has anything to do with Confucian respect for seniority, nor that it is to do with any loss of ‘face’ – however the phrases ‘bad losers’, ‘immature whiners’ and ‘spoilt brats’ do come to mind.
While KMT chairman-elect Ma Ying-jeou has been the model of grace and magnanimity over the last few days, Wang Jin-pyng has been acting like a 12-year-old who’s been told he has to finish his homework before he can watch TV. First came the refusal to even acknowledge Ma’s existence, let alone wind down the window and shake hands, on the night of the election:
Next came the sulky refusal to cooperate:
Wang, the legislative speaker, said he repeatedly told Ma “to leave me out” of his personnel arrangements and said he would follow the example of outgoing KMT leader Lien Chan and serve as a lifelong party volunteer.
Ma, behaving like a grown-up, has repeatedly tried to calm things down, clocking up six separate apologies for anything that might have upset Wang … which hasn’t achieved much since Wang has stuck his fingers in his ears while singing “LaLaLaLa, I’m not listening!”:
Ma said he had apologized to Lien, Wang and party members for confrontations during the election campaign six times — twice before his election win and four times afterwards.
Wang, apparently offended by Ma’s campaign allegations of bribery and other irregularities, denied any knowledge of an apology from Ma and refused another offer from the Taipei mayor to remain as the party’s second-in-command.
As with your average sulky teenager, the reasons for this behaviour are clear: he’s been deprived of something he thought was his right … and he knows he can get away with it. Unfortunately for Ma, his position as head of the household isn’t yet strong enough to do anything much apart from to wait for Wang’s hissy fit to blow over. For the health of the KMT I hope that he does quietly remind Wang that over-indulgent Grandpa Lien won’t be around forever, and that this sort of behaviour won’t be tolerated in the future.
But then….Ma *did* accuse Wang of being corrupt….how is apologizing supposed to undo that? If I were Wang I might not talk to him either.
True – but Wang also accused Ma of the same in retaliation, and I don’t see him offering an apology. Also, before the election Wang was talking about letting bygones be bygones and promising to work with Ma after the election anyway … yet he’s now acting all stroppy.
I’m not saying that he should ignore the accusations, but there are mature ways to deal with this: he could simply ask for a full investigation into the accusations, and in the meantime at least be civil with Ma. Instead, he’s milking this for all it’s worth – despite the fact that it is blindingly obvious he would have lost massively with or without these accusations. It’s exactly the same Modus Operandi that Lien used after the presidential election: whinge, whinge and whinge again, and hope that your complaints overshadow the fact that you lost. Lien didn’t care then about the truth of events, he just wanted to be seen as a martyr … the same with Wang: he doesn’t want the truth – he wants Ma to grovel.
Note the language: “All I care about is the party’s image and what I want is very simple,” Wang said. “I don’t want the public to think that the KMT is a corrupt party”. He doesn’t care about the truth of the allegations – he cares about the effect of the allegations on his/the parties image.