Once again, another election is upon us. If you live in Taipei, you do not need to know anything about elections to understand this, for the streets, buildings and parks of the city are filled with every kind of campaign advertising you can imagine.
These ads are all the same. They show a picture of the candidate in some joyous or thought- ful pose, have their names written in large, bold characters, show their ballot number (just in case you forget their name) and often offer some short, witty and utterly forgettable phrase in Chinese that says little. Sadly, once elected our papers become inundated with their same friendly-yet-thoughtful poses, speaking a lot, yet still saying surprisingly little.
The worst thing about these ads is the saturation in which they are found. The campaign flags are the worst. They are placed only centimeters apart along the city's streets and parks and are somewhat of an eyesore.
The logic to this fails me. I cannot imagine anybody saying, "I don't know much about politics, but this guy has enough campaign flags along the road that I could walk from my home to the MRT on a rainy day without getting my hair wet, so I think I will vote for him."
Pan-blue voters are going to vote pan-blue, and pan-green voters are going to vote pan-green. More moderate voters, which are the only ones a campaign could really sway, are going to roll their eyes and hope for more moderation from their candidates. So putting up literally thousands of advertisements does little.
Don't get me wrong. I think it is a fine thing that people in Taiwan can now vote freely; it is sadly somewhat of a rarity to be able to do so in Asia. However, there needs to be a little tact and self control in how these campaigns are run. There should be enough advertisements that the average citizen can think, "Well, look. Mr Wang is running for City Counselor. Fascinating," and then be able to go on with his day in peace.
The way it is now, people on the streets are constantly bombarded by a campaign that serves only to annoy.
The greatest tragedy about it all is that these candidates claim to care so much about this city, yet are willing to desecrate it using political tactics that do little to serve their purposes.
It would serve the candidates and, most importantly, the citizens of Taipei if the city government would establish zoning laws about where candidates can and cannot place their ads.
This would serve the candidates and the party they represent by saving them literally millions of dollars in campaign expenses. And the law would not be too difficult to enforce since candidates for opposing parties often hold press conferences decrying even the smallest infraction of the law by their rivals.
In conclusion, if someone wants to run for office, fine. But they should not do so at the expense of the city's beauty or its citizens' well-being.
Daniel Mojahedi
Taipei
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
RSS