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
Weeks into the craze, nobody quite knows what to make of the OpenClaw mania sweeping China, marked by viral photos of retirees lining up for installation events and users gathering in red claw hats. The queues and cosplay inspired by the “raising a lobster” trend make for irresistible China clickbait. However, the West is fixating on the least important part of the story. As a consumer craze, OpenClaw — the AI agent designed to do tasks on a user’s behalf — would likely burn out. Without some developer background, it is too glitchy and technically awkward for true mainstream adoption,
On Monday, a group of bipartisan US senators arrived in Taiwan to support the nation’s special defense bill to counter Chinese threats. At the same time, Beijing announced that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had invited Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) to visit China, a move to make the KMT a pawn in its proxy warfare against Taiwan and the US. Since her inauguration as KMT chair last year, Cheng, widely seen as a pro-China figure, has made no secret of her desire to interact with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and meet with Xi, naming it a
A delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials led by Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is to travel to China tomorrow for a six-day visit to Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing, which might end with a meeting between Cheng and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The trip was announced by Xinhua news agency on Monday last week, which cited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Director Song Tao (宋濤) as saying that Cheng has repeatedly expressed willingness to visit China, and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and Xi have extended an invitation. Although some people have been speculating about a potential Xi-Cheng
No state has ever formally recognized the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) as a legal entity. The reason is not a lack of legitimacy — the CTA is a functioning exile government with democratic elections and institutions — but the iron grip of realpolitik. To recognize the CTA would be to challenge the People’s Republic of China’s territorial claims, a step no government has been willing to take given Beijing’s economic leverage and geopolitical weight. Under international law, recognition of governments-in-exile has precedent — from the Polish government during World War II to Kuwait’s exile government in 1990 — but such recognition
RSS