It is no longer a secret that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文) and the ruling party, which is struggling to shore up sagging poll numbers, have started to “colorize” the election campaign by attempting to emphasize the affiliation of Lien and his main opponent, Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), with the blue and green camps respectively, despite Ko being an independent candidate with no party affiliation.
Appealing to party adherence is an understandable approach in a well-functioning democracy, where political parties attract votes by persuading supporters that their policies and principles are superior to the opposition’s.
However, it is also no secret that the nation’s incomplete democratization and its tense and unusual relationship with China have long borne down on the political environment and polarized society by making parties — or party colors — the object of people’s obsession.
The Taipei mayoral election represents an opportunity to break away from the fetter of the ingrained color-coded mindset and revive the ideal of running a campaign based on values and policies.
However, as the only major political party involved in the election, the KMT has not acted in a way that demonstrates confidence in its political standing and philosophies, if it has any.
The KMT has not only been insistently relating Ko to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), it has also started to wage an imaginary war against former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). In a recent round of campaign activities, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) attributed the food safety scandal to Chen, Lien’s campaign director Alex Tsai (蔡正元) called Ko’s recruiting of advisers from various walks of life “a Chen-imitating trick,” and Lien himself cited Chen as an example of a candidate who played dirty tricks to get elected.
Instead of suggesting how it would have acted differently if it were the ruling party in 2005 when, as it alleges, the fodder oil was first imported from Vietnam by Ting Hsin International Group (頂新國際集團), the government simply said the former administration, and Chen in particular, were accountable.
Netizens have been sarcastically calling on Chen to “step down” to make a mockery of KMT politicians’ penchant of alluding to the former president, six years after he was removed from power, to pass the buck, or manipulate some people’s (partially misdirected) entrenched animosity toward and distrust in Chen to their own benefit.
The question is whether the KMT knows how to run a successful campaign against the DPP without mentioning Chen, or events from several years ago.
With the main opponent in the mayoral election lacking affiliation with any political party, the KMT seems at a loss as to how to appear superior. With the veil of party politics lifted, what remains is an archaic party which is unable to segue into the democratic era.
For example, Ma slighted Ko’s goal of “open government, public participation,” saying: “The right of decisionmaking cannot be returned to the people who chose you precisely to decide things for them.”
Also, a KMT legislator panned officials of a government agency in the legislature and said they would be “held accountable” for Lien’s loss if a bill to lower the threshold for retired public officials to receive year-end bonuses failed to pass and “made public officials unhappy.”
The questions raised in a mayoral debate last week by “civic groups” — one which is controversially known to be biased toward the KMT, and the other two which are relatively unheard of — amounted to a mudslinging attempt by Lien, whose spokesman later shrugged off public queries about impartiality. This was just one more example of the dated and transparent acts played out by the KMT in recent weeks.
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
In the 2022 book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, academics Hal Brands and Michael Beckley warned, against conventional wisdom, that it was not a rising China that the US and its allies had to fear, but a declining China. This is because “peaking powers” — nations at the peak of their relative power and staring over the precipice of decline — are particularly dangerous, as they might believe they only have a narrow window of opportunity to grab what they can before decline sets in, they said. The tailwinds that propelled China’s spectacular economic rise over the past