If the pan-blue camp doesn't win the next election, its stupidity is to blame.
The pan blues' stupidity lies in its limited knowledge of today's situation, its own identity and its enemy. Among the many causes that led to the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) swift defeat by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the late 1940s, "ignorance" was one of the key factors, according to its own party elder Chen Li-fu (
Ignorance and stupidity are two different words but they mean the same. The past ignorance of the KMT and the stupidity of today's pan-blue camp make one begin to believe that "political genes" do exist and can be passed down.
The KMT has been an opposition party for almost four years. Despite its fall from power, it still acts as if it were in power, always putting up quite a front. It is ridiculous for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to behave like an opposition party. Yet it is absolutely pathetic for the blue camp to act as if it was still in power.
Election campaigns are not about wining and dining and observing etiquette. The pan-blue camp, however, has churned out excessive formalities for the presidential election. The decision-making platform built between the KMT and the People First Party (PFP) may appear representative but in reality it is not functional at all.
Within the camp, decisions come from two, if not more, sources at the same time, distracting enough to disrupt the camp's original plan and bungle its chance of winning. Not to mention the fact that a crowd of irrelevant figures are attempting to use this mechanism to voice their opinions. So the pan-blue camp has exhausted its resources even before the real battle starts. On the contrary, the DPP has a unified decision-making body.
Interestingly, as the political figures of the KMT-PFP alliance retain their bureaucratic ways, its academics continue to be a school of eggheads. As everyone knows, campaign language has to be simple so that people can easily pronounce and remember them. The pan-blues' cross-strait policies started with their "one China roof," then "parallel development" and later "pro-peace, not pro-PRC."
These expressions may be comprehensible to academics and bureaucrats, yet for those who can immediately understand expressions like "one country on each side," these slogans sound confusing, thus failing to resonate. So the pan-blues' stupidity is even reflected in its choice of language.
Most stupid of all, the pan-blue camp has not yet formulated tactics, not to mention strategies, in the election campaign.
The pan-blue presidential candidates have not mirrored Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's successful campaign tactic of ignoring what his rivals say about him simply because KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
In the last couple of months, the pan-green camp has mercilessly broadsided the pan-blue camp, which in turn could barely cope or fight back, thus resulting in a slump in the polls. Obviously, the pan-blues are so stupid as to choose the wrong tactics.
The pan-blue camp not only knows little about defense, it also knows little about offense. While the pan-greens launch wave after wave of attacks, the pan-blues' attempts to hit back could barely be pettier.
For example, during President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) visit to the US, the pan-blues criticized him for allegedly buying diplomacy with arms purchases and failing to get a 21-gun salute when is is clear to all that the protocol offered to Chen was in the hands of the host country.
These accusations only show that the pan-blue camp is narrow-minded and green-eyed. The pan-blue camp hurts itself with these comments, which unravel its own shortcomings as well as its extraordinary stupidity.
Conducting an election campaign is like fighting a war. The one who obtains a vantage point in strategies stands a better chance of winning. The pan-blue camp should be the one that makes advances and tries to rattle the ruling party. But now the two sides have changed places and the ammunition is in the DPP's hands. Unless the pan-blue camp changes its strategies, it will repeat its history of losing battles because of its own ignorance.
Wang Chien-chuang is the president of The Journalist magazine.
Translated by Jennie Shih
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