Just when President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) seems to be doing nothing right — which is why he and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) are mired in misery — the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) appears to be experiencing the same problem, something the 26-year-old party has never faced before.
The task at hand for the DPP is unprecedented: How to assure Taiwanese during this two-year period without a major national election that it is trustworthy and reformed, and deserves an opportunity to govern again.
The DPP has always thrived during election campaigns, when it could attack the KMT with abandon on many fronts, such as the KMT’s authoritarian history, illegal party assets, vote-buying and its oppression of Taiwanese. The DPP is not only known for its pinpoint agenda-setting, but also for its creative strategies during elections. Even the KMT would likely admit that the DPP has always been better at utilizing its fewer resources for greater gains during elections.
That stage is not available to the DPP until the “seven-in-one” elections to be held late next year, although there could still be some by-elections for it to practice on.
Halfway through this “moratorium period,” the party, under the leadership of DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), is struggling to win back the public’s confidence with the same momentum the KMT enjoyed during the DPP’s low ebb between 2006 and 2008. The DPP has recently made a pair of bold — yet questionable — moves that could come back to haunt it, given the mixed reactions to them within the party.
First, Su announced the launch of a recall movement against KMT lawmakers and Ma over their perceived failure to listen to the public and their poor performances. Second, he hinted that an anti-nuclear referendum in New Taipei City (新北市) should be combined with local elections next year so that it could receive stronger support and be passed.
Both proposals seem legitimate, since Ma has mishandled all of his reform plans, and KMT lawmakers have equivocated between what Ma wants and what the public wants, and an anti-nuclear referendum would need to exceed a high approval threshold in order to stop the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City, becoming operational. So, why did these two proposals receive mixed reviews?
It appears that Taiwanese are so pragmatic that they do not want to waste time now on something which cannot possibly be achieved, such as recalling Ma. As for recalling KMT lawmakers, some DPP members fear that the move could trigger a KMT counterattack of recalling DPP lawmakers, which could eventually lead to an all-out political war between the two parties.
Additionally, while holding referendums in tandem with major elections has been common in other democracies, the practice has been stigmatized in Taiwan by portraying it as a tool to incite “duels” between parties, which the public may not favor.
This characterizes the DPP’s dilemma during this two-year period. The party can neither afford to sit and wait for Ma to fail, nor do anything that might make people think — or help the KMT to spread the idea — that it opposes things merely for the sake of opposition. The DPP’s predicament has been highlighted by its own recent survey that showed that the party’s support was higher than the KMT’s for the first time since 2005, and for the third time in its history, while both parties failed to surpass 26 percent approval ratings.
Facing this unprecedented challenge, the DPP perhaps needs to forget about its nemesis for two years, take a look at itself in the mirror and think about what has brought the party this far since Sept. 28, 1986. It needs to learn to fight a war without its enemy weighing on its mind the whole time.
In a meeting with Haitian Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Victor Harvel Jean-Baptiste on Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) vowed to continue providing aid to Haiti. Taiwan supports Haiti with development in areas such as agriculture, healthcare and education through initiatives run by the Taiwan International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF). The nation it has established itself as a responsible, peaceful and innovative actor committed to global cooperation, Jean-Baptiste said. Testimonies such as this give Taiwan a voice in the global community, where it often goes unheard. Taiwan’s reception in Haiti also contrasts with how China has been perceived in countries in the region
US President Donald Trump last week told reporters that he had signed about 12 letters to US trading partners, which were set to be sent out yesterday, levying unilateral tariff rates of up to 70 percent from Aug. 1. However, Trump did not say which countries the letters would be sent to, nor did he discuss the specific tariff rates, reports said. The news of the tariff letters came as Washington and Hanoi reached a trade deal earlier last week to cut tariffs on Vietnamese exports to the US to 20 percent from 46 percent, making it the first Asian country
On Monday, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) delivered a welcome speech at the ILA-ASIL Asia-Pacific Research Forum, addressing more than 50 international law experts from more than 20 countries. With an aim to refute the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) claim to be the successor to the 1945 Chinese government and its assertion that China acquired sovereignty over Taiwan, Lin articulated three key legal positions in his speech: First, the Cairo Declaration and Potsdam Declaration were not legally binding instruments and thus had no legal effect for territorial disposition. All determinations must be based on the San Francisco Peace
On April 13, I stood in Nanan (南安), a Bunun village in southern Hualien County’s Jhuosi Township (卓溪), absorbing lessons from elders who spoke of the forest not as backdrop, but as living presence — relational, sacred and full of spirit. I was there with fellow international students from National Dong Hwa University (NDHU) participating in a field trip that would become one of the most powerful educational experiences of my life. Ten days later, a news report in the Taipei Times shattered the spell: “Formosan black bear shot and euthanized in Hualien” (April 23, page 2). A tagged bear, previously released
RSS