Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu’s (洪秀柱) campaign office said last Saturday that it had filed yet another lawsuit against political commentator Clara Chou (周玉蔻).
The day before, the office demanded that Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) stop her supporters from attacking Hung’s Facebook page by posting composite pornographic pictures featuring the KMT presidential candidate.
Hung’s campaign office has already taken legal action against some political commentators while criticizing others in public. Why is she so litigation-happy? Is it her problem or that of all the defendants? Can she win the presidential election by filing one lawsuit after the other?
As a matter of fact, Chou had already, on television, clarified her claim about Hung planning to withdraw from the presidential election in exchange for “benefits.”
She said: “What I mean is… now that the alleged exchange for benefits has taken place, perhaps it is spread by the green camp, you know? Because it is so afraid that Hung may be replaced.”
However, Hung’s campaign office still filed a second lawsuit against her, claiming Chou had fabricated untrue stories. Hung is clearly overly combative.
As for the case of netizens fabricating and spreading pornographic pictures featuring Hung on the Internet, it should have been enough just to report the crime to the police. Instead, Hung’s campaign office demanded that Tsai restrain her supporters, as if hinting that those vicious netizens are doing Tsai’s dirty work for her. This in itself is resorting to mud-slinging. Does the campaign office have any evidence that Hung’s online attackers were Tsai’s supporters? Is Tsai Hung’s only rival in this race?
Since Hung is in an unfavorable situation, she may hurt herself if she tries to attack a candidate in a favorable situation with negative campaigning. Hung’s support ratings have constantly been lagging behind, showing that those who do not support her are not only in the majority, but are consistently so. Will the majority of voters really change their mind to support her if her campaign office keeps filing lawsuits? It may even have the opposite effect, as the lawsuits merely bring the rumors to the attention of people who might otherwise know nothing about them. In addition, her rival’s supporters may well be turned off even further by her groundless mud-slinging.
When Hung registered for the KMT’s primary, she said Tsai was a kongxincai (空心菜), the name of a hollow-stemmed vegetable, a name that has taken root because “Tsai” is homophonous with the Chinese word for “vegetable.” Hung, then, was engaging in mud-slinging and negative campaigning right from the start.
A few months have passed since then. Hung, who is nicknamed the “little red pepper,” has displayed no other good flavor than her own “feistiness.”
As a presidential candidate, especially a candidate who is formally nominated, Hung should propose her own campaign policies appropriately. She should also study her rivals’ policies well, so as to expose and attack their flaws. In particular, since her support ratings have largely been lagging behind, she should refrain from criticizing others or trying to satirize them, or even distort facts or slander them with her inherent “feistiness.”
If the “little red pepper” really wants to win the presidential election and lead the country, she should display greater tolerance and tact.
Chiu Hei-yuan is a former research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS