The government wants to hold next year’s presidential election a month earlier than scheduled to coincide with the legislative elections. If President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is not re-elected, that means it will be four months before he hands over power to his successor, although nobody can guarantee he will do that — the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could order agents here to stir up social unrest to give them a pretext for invasion.
How can anyone be sure that people like former vice president Lien Chan (連戰), constantly trying to join with the CCP to take over Taiwan, Hsu Li-nong (許歷農) and Ma, who advocate rapid and gradual unification with China respectively, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential hopeful Hsu Hsin-liang (許信良), who is terrified of the CCP, “high-class Mainlanders” like Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英) and sidekicks like Chao Chih-hsun (趙志勳) will not take advantage of the situation and stir up trouble?
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) asked whether 50,000 first-time voters would be affected by the change, but Wu’s question was misleading. He intentionally focused on the rights of 50,000 first-time voters instead of the national security crisis that would be caused by an excessively long period between elections and inaugurations.
This four-month period is a window in which public opinion could swing and conflict could easily flare up. The situation would be in a state of flux, the perfect time for an external power to invade. These could be Ma’s last four months in power, and he might choose to use them to sign a peace treaty with China and invite the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into Taiwan. The motive behind the combined elections could well be to set Taiwan up for a takeover like that in Tibet in 1959.
This is why Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said that the Election and Recall Act (選舉罷免法) only stipulates that a presidential election be completed at least 30 days before the presidential inauguration, but there are no regulations as to how long before the end of a term an election must be held.
According to Jiang’s logic, as long as an election occurs at least 30 days before the inauguration, it would be legal under the Election and Recall Act. On this basis it could be held months or years before. This, of course, ignores the primacy of the public will in democracies. If the public mood changes, newer preoccupations and opinions should supersede the old.
This is why having an election nearer the end of a presidential term avoids instability during the intervening period, which is itself necessary so that the incumbent administration can prepare to hand over power. This is normal in democracies, and that the Minister of the Interior has the audacity to make nonsensical comments shows that the Ma administration wants to prevent discussion about its machinations.
An excessively long intervening period would risk social unrest, which would give the PLA a pretext to invade. That is why holding combined elections poses such a huge threat. Raising the issue of the rights of 50,000 first-time voters, a comparatively small number of the total electorate, is the KMT’s way of deflecting attention from the real issue. If we fall for this, we will find ourselves turned into a minority group. Wu was instructed to raise the issue and, incredibly, others jumped on the bandwagon.
Extreme caution is necessary; otherwise, the 23 million Taiwanese will suffer the consequences. If Taiwan is annexed, distinctions between blue or green will be irrelevant. Look at what has happened to Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), Wang Dan (王丹), Cao Changqing (曹長青) and Yuan Hongbing (袁紅冰). I wonder what Taiwanese are prepared to do to protect their families, ideals and country.
Tien Nian-feng is a commentator living in Taiwan.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
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
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs