Guo Jia was right!

I blogged a month ago about how Guo Jia, a brilliant strategist 1800 years before us, predicted how Taiwan's political situation could play out in the next few months

• "Yuan Xi and Yuan Shang are going to Liaodong. Illustrious Sir, you are on no account to attack, for Gongsun Kang has long lived in fear lest the Yuans should absorb his country. When they arrive, Gongsun Kang will hesitate. If you attack, he will save the Yuans to help him; if you wait, they will work against each other. This is evident. 今闻袁熙、袁尚往投辽东，明公切不可加兵。公孙康久畏袁氏吞并，二袁 往投必疑。若以兵击之，必并力迎敌，急不可下；若缓之，公孙康、袁氏必自相图： 其势然也。"

Guo Jia's prophecy was observed twice in a month.

1. (pre-recall) Yuans and Gongsun are analogous to CSB and DPP. The recall motion from pan-Blue tied them together
2. After the recall vote, CSB and DPP were tied to the same boats like the 2 Yuans, Gongsun is now analogous to TSU(LTH), Taipei Times and independent pan-Green scholars/ex-student activists (Taiwan Civil Society) (see this for English). Ma's refusal to corner DPP/CSB allowed the fissure within pan-Green camp to emerge

There will be more interesting development down the alley. Let's just wait and see.
(Former ROC president Lee Tenghui told reporters, "There are many 'son of Taiwan', if one cannot do his job well he should be replaced")
A natural question is what should Ma Ying-Jeou say. I think this would be appropriate responses

1. "We maintain our view on the issue of corruption in general, and our recall motion"
2. "The recent letter from pan-Green scholars reminds us that we (KMT) also need to work harder to keep ourselves clean. It should serve us as an good lesson and alarm, as we also have our own problems. We need to learn from the Green camp and deal with them proactively"
3. "We believe our desire for a clean government should be placed above partisan politics. We would welcome constructive criticism from pan-Green, and everyone else, to us in the future. But better still, we should try our best to locate problems and correct ourselves and we should not wait for other parties to step in"
4. "In order to show our respect to the scholars and activists, we pledge that we will not seek to profit from the current scandal. It would be a let-down to our people if we do so. Furthermore, as stated earlier, we will support the DPP vice-president if the president steps down. Doing the right thing is in the voters' interests. Voter's interests precede a party's own interests."
   

Good crisis management could reverse unfavorable event into advantages. This is what the pan-Green has done today. Expect Green support skyrocketing if this self-correction movement succeeds. Pan-Blue is now on the defense. It is the first real challenge to Ma since he became KMT chariman. Staying at selfless high moral ground is the way to deal with this new challenge.

Related: Huangpu's appeal for CCP to learn from Viet-cong
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p.s.
1) DPP seems to continue to tie itself with Bian. Since now it is no longer a partisan spat, the longer DPP clings on to Bian, the deeper it will sink, the less likely pan-Green support can rebound. The worse nightmare for pan-Green is spinning out from DPP.
2) There may be more scandals/evidences that have yet to surface. Some conspiracy theorists believe Chiu Yi probably has his source of information from CCP spy and the series of scandal break out is well planned
3) DPP's final split from Bian may be triggered by new development following the Sogo gift voucher scandal. Or one can view it this way, Bian could find a face-saving good excuse to step down as he promised so already.

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