A group of artists unhappy with the government’s performance is organizing a pajama parade in Taipei on Saturday and calling on President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to donate his salary for the rest of his term.
“We — a group of around a dozen artists — are fed up with Ma’s incapable leadership and wanted to protest. Since we’re all artists, we wanted to express our discontent in a different way,” said Koma Chen (陳佳汝), a theater artist and one of the pajama parade organizers.
“Wearing pajamas is a way to symbolize that our government is asleep, that the public cannot sleep at night without worring that they might have to escape unaided from a disaster, clad in their pajamas, at any time,” Chen said.
“Stop paying the incompetent” and “combat bureaucracy” are the main themes of the demonstration.
She said that while people normally shout slogans during political demonstrations, the organizers wanted to make their protest serve as “action art” and a festival at the same time.
Organizers are expecting 2,000 to 3,000 people to show up, Chen said.
In addition to people marching in their pajamas, there will be bands, street dancing and traditional bajiajiang (八家將) performance groups in the parade.
“Many artists in the country will take part and perform, but they will not be using their real names because they are afraid the Council for Cultural Affairs might take revenge by suspending their government subsidies,” Chen said.
“By making the demonstration less serious, we hope to attract people who aren’t satisfied with the government’s performance, yet who are usually not willing to participate in protests,” she said.
The organizers picked Saturday as their day of action because the Mandarin pronunciation of Sept. 19 — jiu yi jiu — is similar to the Mandarin word for “please save” (救一救, jiu yi jiu), Chen said.
“We wanted to urge everyone to please save Taiwan,” she said.
“Some people said it sounds like ‘jiu ying jiu’ [救英九, save Ying-jeou], but that’s not what we meant,” she said, laughing.
Many Internet users have started mobilizing friends and acquaintances via blogs, the Bulletin Board System, Twitter, Facebook and Plurk. Some people who cannot make it to Taipei on Saturday were discussing organizing parades in other cities.
The parade will start at 3:30pm at the front gate of National Taiwan University at Xinsheng S Road (新生南路) and Roosevelt Road (羅斯福路) and will end at the Liberty Square about one-and-a-half hours later.
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