During elections, politicians want to mobilize the public to convince them to go to the ballot box. To manage that, they have to present voters with a political platform to get their attention, get them to answer to the call to arms and get their adrenaline going. They do this to raise the motivation and willingness of people to vote.
Mobilizing political groups, manufacturing opposition and drawing up lines between enemies and friends become knee-jerk reactions that often deteriorate into a hackneyed, old-fashioned election campaign.
Pre-election polls show ever-increasing proportions of undecided voters, which is probably related to politicians’ lack of progress.
Now that the controversy over the Second Sino-Japanese War has been used up, the stage is set for next month’s Double Ten National Day celebrations and the Republic of China (ROC) drama.
In advanced democracies, competing political parties rarely argue over their nation’s name. Even in Scotland, political parties with different views use either Scotland or Great Britain to urge their respective supporters to vote.
However, they did not go so far as to use their country’s name — as some people do in Taiwan — like the magical compliant golden rod of the legendary monkey king Sun Wukong (孫悟空), which would shrink or expand to the whim of its wielder.
In China, the golden rod can be shrunk to the size of a needle, stuck behind the ear and there you have it: The ROC is gone. In Taiwan, one can take out the golden rod, make it bigger and use the ROC to beat people up. When Chinese come to Taiwan, the golden rod must be put away, in fact it gets confiscated or even broken in two on the spot.
Is this the only thing that the ROC is good for? This is precisely what numerous Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) followers tell the nation through their own example. Therefore, this issue is not interesting.
From this standpoint, the ROC certainly is not a good issue on which to mobilize voters. What, then, would be a more constructive issue?
Presidential candidates ask themselves two questions when running for office: First, what can I add to it? Second, what can I remove from it?
The former is an active approach, the latter passive, but it is also the bottom line that everything boils down to. If one fails at the bottom line, then the very foundations of society will be shaken.
If we apply the question “what can be removed?” to all the candidates, things that can indeed be removed would be the doubts regarding their personal integrity and the flaws that their political party have left behind. The candidates also need to guarantee using legal means to clean up the cross-strait “status quo.”
The “status quo” includes the president and the presidential system, as well as the party assets that keep increasing even though the KMT promised in 2000 that it would deal with the issue.
In principle, regime changes are designed to avoid stagnation and promote change. The question is how to clean up after a president who has remained stagnant in office for eight years and a party whose growing coffers have been left untouched for six decades.
Each presidential candidate should pledge themselves to this question, because it establishes certain values, so that four or eight years later, if their hands are clean, they should be willing to accept the same kind of inspection.
The way this issue is dealt with will be a sign of professionalism and skill, and it send a message that corruption can be eradicated and will not be allowed to continue to fester; other parties will not be allowed to follow in the KMT’s tracks.
Following the second transition of government in 2008, the elites of the former ruling party were exhausted, having lost the presidential election by 2.21 million votes and witnessing the number of their legislative seats falling sharply to 27, far worse than expected.
The main reason for this was that people wanted change, mainly because of one person. This shows the fundamental demands that voters must have from their heads of state. A tragic backlash occurs when a person becomes a suspect. If there are suspicions over one person and one party, it is easy to imagine that the public’s inevitable explosive discontent would be strong enough to move mountains.
This is why anyone who really wants to feel the pulse of public opinion must know how to leverage power at the appropriate time, and declare a sincere determination to tackle the serious issues to win a large number of votes and a majority of seats in the Legislative Yuan.
This is the only way that they will be able to win grassroots support and gain sufficient momentum.
Otherwise, with the nation’s political structure, the small difference between victory and defeat and the lukewarm competition, it will be a lackluster campaign, which in turn will probably affect voter turnout.
This would not bring the results that the candidates are hoping for, whether they are looking to legitimize an election victory or to turn defeat into victory.
Translated by Clare Lear
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