Senior Presidential Adviser Koo Kwang-min (
The elections have even been portrayed as a confidence vote in the president and the prelude to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou's (
Taiwan has been holding democratic elections for decades. The form of these elections may have changed, but there have been no major changes in election culture -- vote-buying and mudslinging still rule the day. The government's rapid and forceful crackdown on vote-buying has not rooted out the practice, but only forced it further underground, making those involved ever more sneaky. The mudslinging war waged by politicians and the media has become the focus of the Dec. 3 elections.
On the surface, the pan-blue camp is still hell-bent on exposing government scandals and claims of corruption. In response, President Chen Shui-bian (
This mudslinging has blurred the focus of the elections and made middle-of-the-road voters reluctant to vote, which may result in a low overall turnout. This is simply a repeat of what happened during the last National Assembly elections, when middle-of-the-road voters did not show up because of the pan-green and pan-blue camps' ideological warring. Such fighting is diametrically opposed to what middle-of-the-road voters expect. The exposure of scandals and smear tactics has no impact on die-hard loyalists, but is rather a catalyst for stronger animosity. More animosity and irrational behavior will only strengthen the political fanaticism of diehard loyalists. We have already seen how the poet Tu shi-san (
Mudslinging is off-putting to most of us. If we do not get the election campaign back on track and make candidates tell us where the real beef is, too many voters will regularly refuse to vote.
The election is, after all, about choosing the wisest and the most capable candidate. Mudslinging is no way to prove superiority. The only result will be that people lose interest in the election.
The muting of the line “I’m from Taiwan” (我台灣來欸), sung in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), during a performance at the closing ceremony of the World Masters Games in New Taipei City on May 31 has sparked a public outcry. The lyric from the well-known song All Eyes on Me (世界都看見) — originally written and performed by Taiwanese hip-hop group Nine One One (玖壹壹) — was muted twice, while the subtitles on the screen showed an alternate line, “we come here together” (阮作伙來欸), which was not sung. The song, performed at the ceremony by a cheerleading group, was the theme
Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised eyebrows recently when he declared the era of American unipolarity over. He described America’s unrivaled dominance of the international system as an anomaly that was created by the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. Now, he observed, the United States was returning to a more multipolar world where there are great powers in different parts of the planet. He pointed to China and Russia, as well as “rogue states like Iran and North Korea” as examples of countries the United States must contend with. This all begs the question:
Liberals have wasted no time in pointing to Karol Nawrocki’s lack of qualifications for his new job as president of Poland. He has never previously held political office. He won by the narrowest of margins, with 50.9 percent of the vote. However, Nawrocki possesses the one qualification that many national populists value above all other: a taste for physical strength laced with violence. Nawrocki is a former boxer who still likes to go a few rounds. He is also such an enthusiastic soccer supporter that he reportedly got the logos of his two favorite teams — Chelsea and Lechia Gdansk —
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they
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