Yao’s effort appreciated
Walking through Taipei’s Ximending area a few days ago, I was surprised to see Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智), the party’s Taipei mayoral candidate, holding a megaphone and urging people to sign the Team Taiwan Campaign for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to have the national team called “Taiwan” instead of “Chinese Taipei.”
The DPP has not helped the “Team Taiwan” campaign in any way. With control of the government and a strong organizational base, even if the party had only provided help behind the scenes, the signature drive would not be struggling, as it is, to reach the threshold for the second stage of the referendum process.
Surely almost anyone willing to sign the campaign would already support Yao anyway, in recognition of his longstanding support for Taiwanese values and interests. So, supporting this campaign is not a worthwhile investment to win votes.
With the election only three months away, time and resources are precious. Considering the Team Taiwan campaign’s limited appeal in Taipei, surely it is foolish of Yao to spend time on it.
To be fair, though, plenty of Taiwanese politicians faced with China’s carrot-and-stick approach choose to sit on the fence and try to please both sides. Their approach might look clever in the short term, but in the long term it achieves nothing and they become pawns in China’s game of divide and rule.
So, while Yao might seem a bit foolish, his foolishness might be the kind of politics that Taiwan really needs.
Huang Wei-ping
Kaohsiung
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