After witnessing the fierce battle during the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) primaries, many observers believe the elections of the district legislators and the president could be a divisive fight for power.
DPP Secretary-General Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) made basic values the most important reason for the defeat of the former New Tide faction in the primaries. By "basic values" he meant loyalty to a local and national identity, as symbolized by the picture of Taiwan on the DPP's party flag. As the internal struggle for power goes on in the DPP, who remembers the green color of the party's flag and the word "progressive" in the name of the party?
In 1981, Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), Lin Cheng-chieh (林正杰) and Kang Shui-mu (康水木) together took part in elections for the Taipei City Council. Fan Sun-lu (范巽綠) was responsible for their publicity at that time. They borrowed the green color of the recently established German Green Party, called for greater environmental protection and used progressiveness as the symbol of the dangwai (opposition) and the DPP.
In the era of authoritarian one-party rule, the DPP united a variety of opposition forces. But after the party got the opportunity to govern, their pluralist progressive values were slowly compromised when the party gradually evolved into a party for all the people. The party relied more and more on nationalist strategies to mobilize the people. The battle song Our Green Flag, Hoisted to the Sky concentrates on the single identity of the supporters. The lyrics focus only on the glorious future of the country.
It's been seven years since the DPP took office, but when it comes to strategies for economic development, the party has accepted the proposals by technocrats left behind from the rule of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). The development ideology of "killing the goose that lays the golden eggs" has not changed with the changing of the ruling party.
It goes from bad to worse, with environmental groups protesting the Suhua freeway after the policy had already been decided upon. Even though the whole world has been talking about sustainable growth for 10 or 20 years, now the government is spouting outdated ideas about how environmental protection hinders the growth of an economy.
Even though mainstream business magazines rush to discuss business opportunities that reduce global warming, and small but ingenious companies that make things like solar power batteries have become kings of the stock market, the government still woos large but outdated businesses of a bygone era.
These are factories with no competitive power that depend on water and electricity prices being below the international level. They are on their last legs -- even though the average labor cost has dropped more than 5 percent annually in the last 10 years -- still threating to leave Taiwan because of unfavorable economic conditions. The increase in salaries predicted by the government can't keep up with the increase in prices, and it still has to subsidize these companies.
The plans for big investments suggested by former premier Su Tseng-chang (
These companies are depleting the precious natural resources of Taiwan to produce cheap steel and plastic, using sheer quantity to get into the Chinese market where quality is not an issue, which worsens our dependence on China. And yet the government has the gall to say that considering these cases is "loving Taiwan"?
Recently the legislative Sanitation, Environment and Social Welfare Committee passed a draft law for the reduction of greenhouse gases. This law stipulates that between 2025 and 2030, emissions must be reduced to the level of 2005 (262 million tonnes). When we compare this to the Kyoto Protocol that says to reduce emission should be reduced by 5 percent compared to 1990 (112 million tonnes), this is a law to increase emissions, not to reduce them.
Yet the Cabinet still seeks to overturn the law, because they don't want to commit to any reduction. If in the future the government accepts the goal of 360 million tonnes of emission by 2012 as proposed by the Chinese National Federation of Industries, they might as well change the color of the party flag from green to black.
To settle old scores, and to prove Chen Shui-bian isn't a lame duck, the head of the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), who was called on to resign by the financial media, is sacrificed as the Cabinet surrenders to the capitalists, for the sake of the electoral war next year.
Under policies that are going completely in the direction of a plunder-style development, whoever takes over the EPA will not be able to uphold the articles of the Basic Environment Act which requires that the environment is given top priority.
It's likely that by the end of July the head of the EPA will be a rubber stamp environmental evaluator, and that the Suhua freeway and the Formosa Plastics steel mill project will quickly be passed. The beautiful mountains and rivers of our mother Taiwan will be sacrificed for short-term election talk of "investing in Taiwan is the same as loving Taiwan."
Few people made a connection between the red-clad anti-corruption protesters last year and socialism -- they just picked a color to distinguish themselves from both the blue and the green camps.
How is the "green" camp, that is now walking away from its values of protecting the environment and progress, any different from other political factions? If the DPP doesn't want the green values anymore, we will be happy to become the only green party in Taiwanese politics.
Pan Han-shen is the secretary-general of Green Party Taiwan.
Translated by Anna Stiggelbout
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