The nature of the protests by 800 Heroes and other groups opposed to pension reform has changed.
They planned group attacks, beat up reporters, attacked lone police officers who had become separated from their fellow officers, surrounded National Taiwan University Children’s Hospital, grabbed reporters’ cameras, and removed barricades and protective fences.
Even Daan Precinct Police Chief Chou Huan-hsing (周煥興) was kicked and beaten. In all, at least 68 police officers and 16 reporters were injured.
When former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) visited the protest site, she told police to pay attention to the demonstrators’ safety, to which police answered, unhappily: “We are the ones who are taking a beating.”
In the US, if your yard is a mess, neighbors will intervene because they feel that the neighborhood belongs to everyone.
Americans believe they are the masters of their own nation, and therefore, they pay attention to public affairs. When the government implements reforms, vested interests will protest, but others will take the reforms personally and strongly support them.
In dictatorships, the leader’s clique handles public affairs, while the public’s only concern is its own direct interests.
After Taiwan turned from dictatorship to democracy in the wake of the 1984 murder of writer Henry Liu (劉宜良), everyone has been chanting the slogan “the people are the masters of the nation” — but they have not become used to playing that role.
The public does not care about public affairs, but only its own direct interests.
Since people do not care about public affairs, reforms are vulnerable to attacks by vested interests. Even if non-vested interests who agree with the reforms are in the majority, they do not treat them as their personal business.
Although nearly 70 percent of Taiwanese support pension reform, the government’s approval rating has dropped as a result of it. That is because, although non-vested interests support the reform, that support does not translate into support for the reformer.
Someone has said that the clashes over pension reform will hurt the ruling party, but the opposite is true: The violence will help the government.
If the groups opposing pension reform had conducted calm and orderly protests, the demonstrations would not have had an effect on the general public and the government could have lost the support of the pro-green camp and swing voters, which would have been a heavy blow.
However, the violence of the protests could spur the public to pay more attention to the reform and to public affairs, and they will realize that it affects them personally.
Although it may not sway pan-blue supporters, swing voters will start supporting the reformer, and that is of course a good thing for President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and her administration.
The protesters’ violent behavior will cause resentment among swing voters, who in addition to beginning to support the reformer as well as the reforms, will also reject opposition parties that support the violence.
That will also be beneficial to the government, although it comes at a great social cost.
Chen Mao-hsiung is a retired National Sun Yat-sen University professor and chairman of the Society for the Promotion of Taiwanese Security.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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