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Taiwan president seeks to save reputation after storm
Fri Aug 28, 2009 12:46am EDT
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By Ralph Jennings
CISHAN, Taiwan (Reuters) - Fatigued and disheveled, Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou sat down at a tense town hall meeting this week to face his biggest political challenge yet: easing anti-government rage after a deadly typhoon.
The president, traveling feverishly through the disaster area to rebuild his reputation, squared off against more than 100 mountain dwellers upset that no one stopped the loss of lives, homes and business due to Typhoon Morakot on August 7-9.
"We didn't do things ideally at first," Ma told the meeting
at a temporary shelter for survivors. "Now we are planning the works, from resettlement and jobs to schooling."
His government, pressed by local opposition leaders, has risked its centerpiece achievement of a detente with political rival China by agreeing to let the popular Dalai Lama visit Taiwan next week to comfort victims.
Beijing reviles the Tibetan spiritual leader as a separatist.
China has claimed sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan since 1949, when Mao Zedong's forces won the Chinese civil war and Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists (KMT) fled to the island. Since taking office in 2008, Ma has sought peace with China.
Ma went to Cishan, a hub city for rescue work, to convince people in the area he was serious about victim resettlement and reconstruction, which if done smoothly could ease earlier criticism ahead of city and county elections in December.
REPUTATION TIED TO RECONSTRUCTION
"If reconstruction works out well, he might recover his reputation, as Taiwan people forget quickly," said Shane Lee, a political science professor at Chang Jung University in Taiwan.
Ma is vying for favor in a region that traditionally votes against his Nationalist Party (KMT). Local aboriginal groups loyal to the KMT were among the hardest hit by the typhoon.
Many in the six-county disaster zone say the government reacted too slowly or with too little concern as the worst storm in 50 years left destruction across southern Taiwan, killing probably more than 650 people in landslides.
It's too early to tell whether Ma will regain popularity during his four-year term, but his effort to win favor in the disaster zone is shaping up as a long slog.
"We still have relatives in the mud who haven't been dug out," said Savi Huang, 31, a housewife from a partly buried village that was found late. "The government's whole outlook is slow. They don't think we're people."
Merchants who have lost income and property to floodwaters that reached the second storeys of some commercial blocks in Cishan want higher levees and earlier flood warnings. Continued...
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