A healthy democratic society needs balanced development in three domains: politics, markets and civil society.
The political domain includes the government, political parties and their peripheral organizations. Markets refer to the commercial domain, including the media, which control capital movements. Civil society refers to independent, non-governmental and non-political civic organizations and the actions of individual citizens beyond politics and markets.
To put it simply, as soon as political or commercial forces are involved in civil activities, they no longer belong to civil society. Similarly, a civil movement refers to a movement launched by civil society, and if political and commercial forces are involved, it is no longer a civil movement.
It has been more than a month since former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Shih Ming-teh (施明德) launched the his campaign to oust President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). Shih even launched a large demonstration on national day last Tuesday. He claims that the campaign is a new civil movement, and that is also the way many local media outlets report it.
But the campaign has been seriously distorted from the outset. Owing to direct involvement by both market and political forces, it has already lost the character of a civil movement, becoming a battleground for political and commercial actors.
The media's involvement is obvious. Not only have they run exaggerated and biased reports praising the campaign and deifying Shih, but they have also become the directors of the whole show. They have become accomplices, serving as the campaign's PR machine.
Newspapers reported that some TV stations doubled as the campaign's command headquarters during the demonstration, which violated the Broadcasting and Television Law (廣電法). Media reform groups have pushed for reforms to penalize this kind of behavior, but all their efforts now seem to have been in vain.
It would have been impossible for the campaign to last for over a month without political support. Take the demonstration on Tuesday for example -- legislators and city or county councilors from both the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party (PFP) were appointed to control 29 intersections around the Presidential Office. The two parties offered their full support to this event.
How much has Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) done for the campaign, and how much help did local blue-camp politicians offer during the campaign's recent round-the-island tour? We all know the answer to this question. PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) has even been given the title "night school dean" for joining the sit-in every night. Who believes that the campaign has not been mobilized by the pan-blue parties?
Some of the campaign's decisionmakers have long devoted themselves to civic movements in Taiwan. Regrettably, however, the KMT and PFP are also involved, while the campaign indulges itself in the myth created by the media, overturning the character of a civil movement and departing from civic society. Due to the direct involvement of both the media and political parties, the nature of the campaign has changed. The "anti-corruption" call has become a tool for power struggle between the ruling and opposition parties. This has caused a reaction from pan-green camp supporters, causing social division and confrontation.
By spreading hatred, nobody will be the winner. As society pays a high price, how much effort and time will it take to heal the wounds? More sadly, this self-proclaimed new civil movement has led to the failure of our civil society and regression of Taiwan's democracy.
Allen Houng is convener of the Constitution Reform Alliance.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this