The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) resounding defeat in Saturday’s nine-in-one elections should jar it into heeding the following warning signs:
First, the BBC’s Chinese-language Web site hit the nail on the head when it said that Taiwanese elections are turning into variety shows.
With a malicious neighbor like China, how can Taiwan let its elections sink to the level of entertainment?
It could be a game of death for Taiwan’s democracy.
Why did Hou You-yi (侯友宜), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate for New Taipei City mayor, trounce his DPP rival, Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), despite refusing to participate in debates?
How did Kaohsiung mayor-elect Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT easily beat DPP candidate Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), despite failing to answer several questions in their debate?
It really makes a mockery of democratic elections.
Second, there has been a big shift in public opinion.
The DPP in 2016 won landslide victories in the Jan. 16 presidential and legislative elections.
Less than three years later — even though the DPP’s candidates were at least as good as their rivals — the number of DPP mayors in the six special municipalities went from four to two, while the DPP kept just four of the nine other cities and counties it previously governed.
The defeat was largely the result of the DPP’s central leadership drifting away from the grassroots. Voters have taught President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration a lesson about its “cloud governance.”
Saturday’s results were a backlash against the DPP for such a departure from public opinion.
Third, the government’s reforms are stalling. If the public had wanted to keep the “status quo,” voters in 2016 would not have replaced the KMT with the DPP.
Reforms need orienting, prioritizing. The most applauded part of Tsai’s inaugural speech was the part about judicial reforms, but those reforms are still treading water.
Why did her government have to push through its plan for employees to have “one fixed day off, one flexible rest day” workweek, despite the barrage of complaints from employers and workers?
As for gender issues, of course people’s sexual orientation should be respected, but the referendum against same-sex marriage show that Tsai has boxed herself in by treating LGBTIQ issues as a national policy of top priority.
The DPP’s election defeats make Tsai a lame-duck president. This is surely not what voters had in mind in 2016, when they handed the DPP control of the legislative and executive branches of government.
Fourth, China successfully interfered in the elections. When China’s “Internet army” tried to interfere in the US midterm elections, US President Donald Trump’s team saw what it was up to and took precautions early on, leaving China empty-handed.
By contrast, China has done much better using the same tactics on Taiwan. In the past, China tried using verbal and military threats and even fired missiles to influence major elections in Taiwan, but failed every time. This time, it changed tactics. China found that it could use the Internet to easily mold public opinion and influence election results.
It is sure to follow the same recipe in the 2020 presidential and legislative elections. Between now and 2020, the DPP must work out how to counter China’s interference.
Chang Kuo-tsai is a retired National Hsinchu University of Education associate professor and a former Taiwan Association of University Professors deputy secretary-general.
Translated by Julian Clegg
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers