There is a popular saying in Taiwan: “Those in charge will not make trouble,” something President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) can relate to after her inauguration on Friday last week.
Hopes are high for real change after Tsai won by a landslide in the Jan. 16 election. For some, particularly those who loathe the remnants of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) former authoritarian regime and the nation’s “abnormal” status and over-dependence on China, the changes they aspire to are transitional justice and a step forward toward making Taiwan a de jure sovereign state.
However, since the day of Tsai’s inauguration, these people might have come to a swift realization that change might not arrive as fast and as radically as they have envisioned. It might also go hand-in-hand with some uncomfortable compromises.
The reasons are simple: There is still a not-so-small group of Taiwanese who prefer the cross-strait “status-quo” over independence; view the Republic of China (ROC) as the legitimate government of Taiwan rather than a government-in-exile that has forced itself upon Taiwanese; and regard the pursuit of transitional justice as an act of political vengeance against the KMT.
Most of all, while Taiwanese can hate China all they want, the price of irritating the global heavyweight is one that an increasingly isolated nation cannot afford to pay.
Probably with all the reasons in mind, Tsai has realized that she is no longer just the chairperson of a party that has spent most of its time in opposition. She is now the president of a nation bitterly divided by differences in ideology, ethnicity and class. If she wants to pacify those who voted for her opponents and the nation’s belligerent neighbor across the Taiwan Strait, compromises have to be made.
As a result, rather than skipping certain words in the ROC national anthem that are reminiscent of the KMT party-state, as she had done many times in the past, Tsai chose to sing through the song at her inauguration.
Three days after she took office, Tsai also followed precedent and paid tribute to ROC “founding father” Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙), as well as civilian and military “martyrs” who died before and after the founding of the ROC in 1912, at the Martyrs’ Shrine in Taipei.
While Tsai removed many of the traditional rituals from the ceremony, such as yaoji (遙祭) — meaning paying tribute to the tomb of someone from afar — her action still aggravated some pro-independence advocates. These activists said Tsai should pay homage to Taiwanese who sacrificed their lives defending the nation against foreign colonists, urging the president not to follow the KMT’s sinicization agenda and China-centered historical perspective.
Another compromise can be seen in the five-
minute speech delivered in English by Minister of Health and Welfare Lin Tzou-yien (林奏延) on Wednesday at the World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva, Switzerland.
In the speech, Lin mostly used the name “Chinese Taipei” — under which Taiwan has attended the WHA as an observer since 2009 — to refer to the nation. The only time he mentioned “Taiwan” was when he talked about the “Taiwanese population.”
Some pan-green politicians — mainly New Power Party members — and pro-independence advocates were unhappy with Lin’s speech, which they view as failing to advocate Taiwanese sovereignty and succumbing to China’s belittlement tactics.
They were also quick to compare Lin’s speech with the one delivered by then-minister of health Chiang Been-huang (蔣丙煌) at last year’s WHA conference, where Chiang mentioned “Taiwan” twice, including once in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese).
Surely, these compromises might seem innocuous and even inevitable at the moment, given that Tsai’s supporters are likely to be more patient and tolerant during the honeymoon period.
However, their patience might run out fast if the new head of state continues to play it safe without delivering some real reform.
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