The government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have provoked all kinds of conspiracy theories with their recent decision to cancel or postpone a number of foreign delegations that had been lined up to observe the upcoming elections.
Many of those affected apparently expressed concern that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) could be preparing the ground for some serious pre or post-election shenanigans, should President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) be trailing or actually lose the battle of the ‘Yings’ to the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Jan. 14.
Maybe people are reading too much into it, but when a supposed trip to observe an election is postponed until after said election, then one would have every right to be a little concerned. Kind of defeats the purpose, wouldn’t you say?
One theory (my own) is that the money saved will be used for more immediate and pressing election-related matters — such as paying for the trips of overseas KMT supporters who will actually come back to vote, rather than foreigners who can’t vote, largely sympathize with the enemy and only cause trouble anyway.
This makes perfect sense from a KMT point of view. Even if our KMT overlords were thinking of some sneaky ballot-box stuffing, it would be pretty difficult to get away with such antics in today’s increasingly wired world — with bloggers and members of the public armed with cellphone cameras lurking on every corner.
However, if the Central Election Commission were to suddenly announce two days before polling that it was going to erect 2m high fences around polling stations, or if the KMT were to declare a win in Greater Tainan, then maybe others would also start to get a little suspicious.
Even so, it’s hard to understand why the KMT would want to bother with such extreme measures in the first place.
They would be better off waiting for an increasingly confident DPP to shoot itself in the foot (or the stomach, if you believe the KMT’s 2004 “Bulletgate” bullshit). It would seem as if the DPP is already obliging, given the recent furor over small, irrelevant orange things — persimmons, not the People First Party.
The DPP seems to have done itself some damage with its campaign calendar showing ridiculously exaggerated rock-bottom prices of various fruits — most notably persimmons at NT$2 per jin (600g) — while blaming Ma and the government’s policies for this and all of local farmers’ ills.
The KMT was quick to refute those figures, with KMT fossil-in-eternity Lien Chan (連戰) claiming that on the one occasion he actually visited a market with his mother — back when Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) was still alive — he had seen persimmons going for NT$10 per jin. (OK, so I made up that last bit up, but you get my drift.)
Luckily for the DPP, this all seems to have happened far enough ahead of the vote that it will be long forgotten come next month.
Nevertheless, one can almost understand why the KMT would be considering some serious dirty tricks as, judging by the gravity of chief attack dog Chiu Yi’s (邱毅) latest expose, it seems the toupeed troublemaker may finally be losing his mojo.
Having caused DPP vice presidential candidate Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) some discomfort with revelations about his Pingtung luxury farmhouse, Chiu’s latest bombshell is that Su’s wife went to a party that featured a male stripper.
Trouble is Su’s wife was just a guest at the party, not the host, and the party was ... 10 years ago. Shock, horror!
Su may have apologized (I don’t know why), but if that’s the best Chiu and his informants can come up with, then KMT headquarters better get on the phone with the printers pronto and order some extra ballot papers.
Joe Doufu is a Taipei-based satirist.
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS