Don't use cross-strait ploy for votes

If the people are unsatisfied with the ruling party's policies, they can wait for the next election to make their opinions known. But the government shouldn't give people false hopes. Still more importantly, it shouldn't use cross-strait relations as political capital at election time.

The ups and downs in cross-strait relations over the past ten years appear to contain a discernible pattern. When no elections were being held, everything was tranquil, but the larger an important election loomed on the horizon, the greater the storm that arose.

The 1996 missile-test crisis and then president Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) "special state-to-state" declaration of 1999 both pushed relations to the brink of warfare around the time of presidential elections. We don't know whether this was a coincidence, and we have no way of predicting whether there will be another wave of tense relations before 2004. But it is to be hoped that the people's security won't be at stake in the election. After all, all that the people ask of the government is an environment in which they can live and work in peace.

Emile Sheng is an assistant professor of politics at Soochow University.

Translated by Ethan Harkness