The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) made sweeping gains in the 2014 elections for mayors and county commissioners, but suffered a heavy defeat in last year’s local government polls.
In 2016, the DPP easily won the presidency, along with more than 60 percent of the seats in the legislature, yet its outlook for next year’s presidential and legislative elections is highly uncertain.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) served two four-year terms as mayor of Taipei from 2006 to 2014, but in 2015 he could not even get elected as a legislator in Keelung.
People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) has shaken hands and talked with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin, but this did nothing to raise his status in Taiwan. On the contrary, his party lost strength in the following elections.
As for former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the KMT, 70 days after his “meeting of the century” with Xi in Singapore on Nov. 7, 2015, the KMT lost the presidency and its legislative seats fell from 64 to 35.
The tides of democracy are turning faster than ever before. Electoral swings are faster and bigger, and political stars fade faster, too.
These election reversals might seem hard to explain, but there are underlying reasons.
One of those is the Taiwan factor. Needless to say, the voters in Taiwan’s elections are Taiwanese, so elections cannot be won without getting the Taiwanese on your side.
It is no use paying lip service to this land and its people when elections come around. One has to keep them in mind at all times and give them top priority.
The culture of political parties in Taiwan is such that both of the two main parties always talk about “Taiwan” and “the people” at election time, but when the elections are over they both neglect Taiwan’s future and the public’s well-being.
They might differ in their degree of neglect and how blatantly they share the booty, but voters clearly loathe this political culture altogether.
Voters have repeatedly sent a crystal-clear message to politicians who fail to mend their ways: that parties are usually defeated not by their opponents, but by themselves.
This was equally true of the 2014, 2016 and last year’s elections, and those who understand this pattern are trying to stop it from happening again next year.
Modern voters are becoming less patient, and it is common for them to quickly shift from enthusiasm to disappointment. Politicians’ shelf lives are getting shorter.
Politicians might think they can trap people into voting for them, even with tears in their eyes because there is no better choice, but it is getting harder to turn this daydream into reality.
Neither of the two main parties can muster the courage and wisdom to get out of the mire of the nation’s degenerate “political party culture.”
This failure has left voters with no choice but to repeatedly swing between them in the hope of spurring the “soy-sauce vat” of political culture to be thoroughly transformed, be it willingly or by force.
The second reason is the China factor. Cross-strait relations can float a ship, but they can also sink it. Until the day comes when the Chinese Communist Party’s one-party rule and Xi’s personal dictatorship have been completely overturned, any China dreams would be just pie in the sky.
Taiwan and Taiwanese are the tangible reality. Except for those who believe their own lies, everyone knows that.
When you leave the land that lies beneath your feet and wave goodbye to the friends around you, you will also be leaving behind familiar and cherished things like freedom, human rights, democracy and dignity, not to mention more practical things like your personal property and pension.
If parties and politicians want to cultivate relations with China and build bridges of friendship, that is fine, and there is a market for it.
However, they are making a mistake if they think the China card is the only ace in the nation’s hand or that cross-strait relations should be the top priority in foreign relations, or even the only thing there is.
Those who think they can raise their status by attending cross-strait forums or consorting with China’s Taiwan Affairs Office or its Hong Kong Liaison Office will definitely cross a red line as far as Taiwanese are concerned.
When that happens, voters might use their ballots as a way to step on the brakes.
Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) seems to understand that. That would explain why, in a talk he gave at Harvard University after visiting the Hong Kong Liaison Office, he balanced his China-friendly move by saying that Taiwan’s national defense depends on the US.
People only need to look at the results of Taiwanese elections since 1996 to see whether China’s overt or covert assistance helps or hinders its favored candidates at the polls.
If politicians plan to push Taiwan into the Chinese fire, they would need to use some very clever sleight of hand, because if voters spot what they are doing, they would not allow themselves to be bound and gagged.
The clarion calls have already been sounded for next year’s elections. Open and behind-the-scenes struggles are taking place in the two main parties, where certain heavyweight potential candidates do not want primaries to be held and absurd scenes are being played out.
What a contrast with the way former British prime minister Winston Churchill accepted electoral defeat: “I leave when the pub closes.”
How different from the attitude of South Africa’s last apartheid-era president, F.W. De Klerk, who released Nelson Mandela from jail and abolished the policies of apartheid.
De Klerk was jointly awarded the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela, and the following year he handed the presidential baton to Mandela and served as his deputy president.
As well as a deep sense of respect for their magnanimous demeanor, one has to wonder whether politicians of Churchill’s and De Klerk’s caliber will ever appear in Taiwan.
Chang Kuo-tsai retired as an associate professor at National Hsinchu University of Education and is a former deputy secretary-general of the Taiwan Association of University Professors.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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