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.
In September 2013, the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) quietly released an internal document entitled, “Coursebook on the Military Geography of the Taiwan Strait.” This sensitive, “military-use-only” coursebook explains why it is strategically vital that China “reunify” (annex) Taiwan. It then methodically analyzes various locations of interest to People’s Liberation Army (PLA) war planners. The coursebook highlights one future battlefield in particular: Fulong Beach, in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District, which it describes as “3,000 meters long, flat, and straight,” and located at “the head of Taiwan.” A black and white picture of Fulong’s sandy coastline occupies the
US President Joe Biden’s first news conference last month offered reassuring and concerning insights regarding his administration’s approach to China. Biden did not mention the contentious meeting in Alaska where US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan confronted China’s top two foreign policy officials. The Americans implicitly affirmed the administration of former US president Donald Trump’s direct pushback against communist China’s repressive domestic governance and aggressive international behavior. Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) and Chinese Central Foreign Affairs Commission Director Yang Jiechi (楊潔篪) had explicitly demanded a return to the policies of
Early last month, China’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC), officially approved the country’s 14th Five-Year Plan. The strategy was supposed to demonstrate that China has a long-term economic vision that would enable it to thrive, despite its geopolitical contest with the US. However, before the ink on the NPC’s stamp could dry, China had already begun sabotaging the plan’s chances of success. The new plan’s centerpiece is the “dual-circulation” strategy, according to which China would aim to foster growth based on domestic demand and technological self-sufficiency. This would not only reduce China’s reliance on external demand; it would also
Interrupting the assimilation of Xinjiang’s Uighur population would result in an unmanageable national security threat to China. Numerous governments and civil society organizations around the world have accused China of massive human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and labeled Beijing’s inhumane and aggressive social re-engineering efforts in the region as “cultural genocide.” Extensive evidence shows that China’s forceful ethnic assimilation policies in Xinjiang are aimed at replacing Uighur ethnic and religious identity with a so-called scientific communist dogma and Han Chinese culture. The total assimilation of Uighurs into the larger “Chinese family” is also Beijing’s official, central purpose of its ethnic policies
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