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Editorial: Ignore opinion at your peril

Anyone aspiring to become president of this nation, should take stock of mainstream public opinion. This is an obvious step that any would-be president should take before they start trumpeting themselves as the best qualified person for the job.

Bearing this in mind, the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) four presidential aspirants should take the results of a newly-released survey from the Taiwan Thinktank to heart. The Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) presidential frontrunner, former chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who has outlined his policy for the nation as one of ultimate unification with China, would also do well to take a closer look at the results.

Based on the answers of 1,064 respondents, the survey showed that 79.5 percent believed that only Taiwanese are entitled to make a decision on the nation's future, while 14.5 percent said the decision should be made jointly by the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

The survey, released on Tuesday, also showed that 81.9 percent of respondents believed that China has no right to interfere in Taiwan's internal affairs, including the government's ongoing name-change campaign and drive for constitutional reform, while 12.8 percent said China has the right to do so.

For the four DPP presidential contenders vying for the party's nomination, the survey serves as a reminder that they need to stay in line with the party's founding principles and ideals.

For Ma, who has time and again stated unification with China as his eventual goal for the nation, the results should be a wake-up call and seem to suggest he needs to reassess his platform and his "Greater China" mindset if he hopes to succeed in becoming president.

That a Taiwanese identity has been steadily building over the past years is an undeniable fact.

A survey by the Election Study Center at National Chengchi University last December showed that the percentage of respondents who consider themselves "Taiwanese" had increased from 56 percent in 2005 to 60 percent last year.

A more recent poll on the matter conducted by the DPP and released on Tuesday showed that 68 percent of respondents identified themselves as Taiwanese, 16.8 percent identified themselves as Chinese, while 11.7 percent said they were both Taiwanese and Chinese.

All poll results must be taken with a pinch of salt and the accuracy of such polls is a contentious issue. Nonetheless, the various polls all suggest a similar trend: Taiwan consciousness is on the rise and that the ratio of those who believe Taiwan should move toward independence has also steadily increased.

How can Ma -- or whoever the DPP representative turns out to be -- expect to win the support of the electorate if they fail to put their faith in a Taiwan consciousness and reflect what is obviously becoming the mainstream opinion?

How does any presidential hopeful expect to score a victory in next year's presidential election if they stand diametrically opposed to what the vast majority of people believe in?

As academic and pioneer in the contemporary field of leadership studies Warren Bennis once said:"Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery."

All those who aspire to run for the country's top job should ensure that the Taiwanese are not relegated to that periphery.
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