It would be difficult these days to ignore all the grumbling about how "messy" the road to next year's legislative and presidential elections has become. And with election time just around the corner, those voices are bound to become even louder.
It has not, indeed, been a pretty picture. The electoral painting so far consists of precious few strokes of originality, several blotches of character assassination and equal daubs of sheer stupidity, gallons of promises, layer upon layer of empty rhetoric and swaths of unused canvas. Moreover, the two principal artists who have worked on the project have not been given the same amount of paint, which has resulted in an imbalanced artwork, with far more blue than green.
We've also seen the machinations to rig (or refashion, depending on one's view) the Central Election Commission in the hopes of avoiding a deplorable historical truth, accusations of platforms stolen, repetition ad nauseam of a supposedly sagging economy, the "one vote" versus "two vote" war of attrition and the UN referendum, joined at the hip by its Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-hatched evil twin.
Throughout all this we have had the probes into alleged corruption and the Democratic Progressive Party's asinine proposal yesterday that the immediate relatives of those responsible for the 228 Incident be legally accountable to the victims' families -- all cynical efforts that only the long dead would fail to associate with the elections. Ugly indeed.
But before you start planning something other than a visit to the polling booth on election day, think of this: Are elections elsewhere -- in countries where elections are actually possible -- any better? A brief survey should enlighten us.
In the democracy of democracies, US President George W. Bush, who lost the 2000 election by any reasonable measure, has been in the White House for seven long years. Across the Florida Strait, Cuban President Fidel Castro, who likes to call Cuban elections "the most democratic in the world," is not even directly elected by citizens.
Populists, meanwhile, like to boast of popularity levels that are so laughable as to be equaled only by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's -- and that was at gunpoint. Hugo Chavez has sought (but seems to have failed and will likely blame the US) to become president for life, while Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose term is up, is trying to devise a way to stay in power. In Pakistan, meanwhile, Pervez Musharraf has been dismembering democracy one judge at a time in preparation for elections, the outcome of which is known by all.
Closer to home, the Philippine president cannot even leave the country without fearing she might not be president when she returns. Thailand, for its part, has had so many coups we've lost count, while in Hong Kong, despite pro-democracy Anson Chan's (
The truth is that democracy is a cacophony and the inherent freedoms it guarantees allow individuals to exploit and contort and distort. Imperfect though it is, Taiwan's democracy works, and when you weigh it against the many other democracies and quasi-democracies of this world, it doesn't fare too badly. Transfer of power has occurred peacefully, the military is safely under civilian control and will not take to the streets whenever the president leaves the country.
And anyone who would propose becoming president for life would be laughed out of town so fast that he or she would have no choice but to flee to China or any other country whose political system makes a travesty of democracy.
The Comedy Club on Fuxing N Road in Taipei was vandalized with paint bombs mixed with feces on May 29, allegedly because one of its performers had satirized Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The incident has triggered concerns about the growing threat from China’s cross-border repression within Taiwan. On the day of the attack, a comedian surnamed Huang (黃), who is known for mocking Xi, was the headline performer. The Comedy Club founder said the assault was obviously politically motivated. China, which Freedom House said “conducts the most sophisticated, extensive and far-reaching campaign of transnational repression in the world,” has
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Just before dawn on Jan. 17, a Chinese military drone crossed for the first time into Taiwanese airspace above a disputed coral reef in the South China Sea. The reconnaissance aircraft lingered over Pratas Island (Xisha Island, 西沙群島) for a few minutes, while Taipei issued warnings to leave over international radio frequencies. China said the flight was a “normal” training mission. Taiwan called it “provocative and irresponsible.” On the other side of the world, officials in Europe saw the maneuver as part of a long-term Chinese plan to salami-slice away Taiwanese control over its territory and, eventually, force its unification with China. EU officials
Following the outbreak of conflict in Iran, TikTok was flooded with videos targeting Taiwanese users. Many featured artificial intelligence (AI)-generated anchors posing as Taiwanese broadcasters with localized traditional Chinese subtitles. The videos warned of imminent social collapse due to liquefied natural gas shortages, blamed the Democratic Progressive Party and its alleged failed energy policies for a fabricated crisis, and used recycled footage from unrelated events to create the impression Taiwan stood on the edge of systemic breakdown. By saturating the information environment with falsehoods or selectively edited material designed to trigger emotional responses, malign actors can exploit cognitive vulnerabilities and
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