The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday said it is “unbearable to see” a party with a 100-year-long history having to stoop to citing a “strange article” with a view that “curiously deviates from the US official and academic mainstream’s stance” in order to attack the DPP.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus held a news conference yesterday calling DPP Chairperson and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) “violent Ing” and claiming that the US has given her a slap in her face, citing an article in The Diplomat magazine by Dennis Hickey, a professor of political science and director of the graduate program in global studies at Missouri State University, that questioned Tsai’s pro-independence stance and her “subsidizing [of the] extremists” who attacked government agencies.
“Hickey said in his article that the DPP has been employing ‘a Middle Eastern practice’ of gathering people to cause skirmishes, known as a ‘rent-a-mob,’ and ‘subsidizing extremists who attack government ministries,’ making it ‘increasingly difficult for Americans to sensibly argue that Taiwan is a model of democracy,’” KMT deputy caucus whip Lin Te-fu (林德福) said.
The KMT said that Hickey’s article shows that “the US recognizes the fact Tsai had deeply intervened and financially supported the Sunflower movement and the anti-curriculum movement.”
“The occupation of government agencies is a typical Middle Eastern terrorist group’s practice; the US is really worried that Taiwan could get ‘ISIS-ized,’” Lin said, referring to the Islamic State group, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and claiming the US is also concerned that Tsai’s presidency would bring Taiwan toward de jure independence and drag the US into a war.
KMT presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) said the article indicates that Tsai’s US visit earlier this year was a failure, despite the DPP saying it was a success.
“It is a serious problem” that the US, at this point, is making this kind of comment about Tsai, questioning Taiwan’s democracy and suspecting that there might be a war if Tsai gets elected, Hung said.
The DPP said that the article “is biased on a viewpoint that is extremely different to that of US officials and mainstream academics.”
“It is an article believed to have no reference value, but the KMT is desperately clinging to it, taking it as a ‘driftwood on the angry sea,’” DPP spokesperson Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) said, adding that Tsai’s US tour met with positive responses from the US.
The article’s likening of Taiwan’s recent democratic movements to “violent Middle Eastern mobs” is “not only rude, but also inappropriate,” Cheng said, adding that Susan Stevenson, deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy at the US Department of State’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, when visiting Taiwan during the 318 movement, said that the US acknowledges that Taiwan is a vivacious democracy where everyone has a right to the freedom of speech.
“The KMT [is using the article as an attempt to] defame its own countrymen and say that social movements equate to Taiwan being ‘ISIS-ized.’ It is just sad to witness a 100-year-old party’s [degeneration],” Cheng said.
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