Daggers drawn

RARELY in Taiwan’s 17 years of democracy have opinion polls painted a president as unpopular as Ma Ying-jeou. Though he is often accused of being ineffectual, it is actually a rare show of decisiveness that has lost Mr Ma (pictured, left) recent support. At issue is his handling of alleged wrongdoing by a titan of Mr Ma’s Kuomintang (KMT), Wang Jin-pyng (pictured, right). The effect has been to threaten the unity of the ruling party, as well as send ripples across the Taiwan Strait.

“We can’t just muddle our way through this,” Mr Ma said on September 8th. That was two days after prosecutors alleged that Mr Wang had used his influence as the speaker of parliament in a court case. He had, they said, tried to persuade the justice minister, Tseng Yung-fu, to lobby prosecutors not to revive an embezzlement case against a prominent opposition lawmaker. Ker Chien-ming had been found guilty, but a higher court had overturned the verdict. Mr Ma said that Mr Wang’s alleged “influence-peddling” marked “the most shameful day in the history of democracy and rule of law in Taiwan”. On September 11th Mr Wang was expelled from the KMT.