Last weekend, the Taiwan Rural Front and farmers from all over the country held an overnight protest on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei. It was the second such demonstration, the first having taken place exactly one year ago.
The repeat protest is a cause for celebration and anxiety among farmers’ supporters. What is worth celebrating is that farmers are gradually growing stronger as a force in their own right. They have shown that they can sustain a vigorous movement, keep watch on the government and make their voices heard when it breaks its promises. What makes people anxious, on the other hand, is that the central government’s response to farmers’ demands consists mostly of stopgap measures and pledges made in bad faith. The government seems incapable of coming up with any effective and realistic policies.
Starting from the overnight sit-in on Ketagalan Boulevard in July last year, the farmers — who had put up with and given in to various land enclosure laws before — have demonstrated that they are not willing to give in and stay silent anymore. A fertile farmland is the most basic requirement for rural livelihood, and farmers in many places around the country have joined together to defend that land by forming local groups and a national alliance. They are determined to resist wanton expropriations of farmland by the government in the name of development and for the benefit of big business.
The farmers’ unity and determination have, in turn, moved many other citizens, including academics and students, to come out and support them and stand shoulder to shoulder with them. This past year has seen various struggles in which farmers and people from various other sectors have supported one another through self-organized protests. Two examples are the opposition to the construction of the Kuokuang Petrochemical complex on the coast of Changhua County and the successful fight by residents of Wanbao Borough (灣寶) in Miaoli County’s Houlong Township (後龍) against expropriation of their land to give way to the expansion of the science park. Such scenes are an expression of Taiwan’s gradually maturing civic society, and this movement is the deepest and most incisive force confronting the plutocratic political setup that has long been the norm in the country. It is something we should cherish and the most direct form of support is to take part in protest demonstrations.
Government’s apparent failure to understand the role public offices are supposed to play is a cause for worry. All the government has to offer in response to the protesters’ demands is stopgap measures, buck-passing, disorganization and chaos.
In Taiwan, power is distributed among the central and local governments, and this allows the central government to shrug off its own political responsibilities, all in the name of “local autonomy.” However, local governments are constrained by an electoral system in which local factions exert a great deal of influence and pressure. Local governments have been accustomed to expropriating farmland and setting up industrial zones all over the place to chalk up short-term political accomplishments, and this practice has seriously eroded the nation’s self-sufficiency in food and damaged its ecology.
The role of the central government should be to intervene by exerting its authority through macroeconomic control and preventing land enclosure that kills off agriculture for the sake of short-term advantage and quick profits.
National leaders should not just sit on their hands while local governments bury the prospects for sustainable development in Taiwan. In supporting the farmers, we are also trying to ensure that we still have enough to eat in the future. In light of the recent food scare, the central government should carry out its duty to make sure that food is healthy and safe.
What we don’t need is ministers trying to fob off public protest with glib comments, as Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) is inclined to do.
A full year has passed since the first overnight sit-in protest on Ketagalan Boulevard, and during this period the government has repeatedly broken the promises it made back then. We have to ask whether, a year from now, the farmers will have to take to the streets once more, their hearts heavy with disappointment. When will our leaders break their habit of responding by passing the buck and offering Band-Aid solutions whenever farmers come out in protest? We need leaders whose starting point and highest purpose is the well-being of people at the grassroots. We need leaders who have the guts to say “no” to big business and who strive to build a truly democratic, just and sustainable Taiwan.
Hsia Hsiao-chuan is a professor and director of the Graduate Institute for Social Transformation Studies at Shih Hsin University.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
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