Party politics in Taiwan is a strange affair. The offices of the president, the premier and the opposition leaders are less than a kilometer apart, but for many years, they have treated each other as enemies and communicated only via the media, avoiding any kind of interpersonal interaction. This kind of “cold war” politics is making it difficult for Taiwan to move forward.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has said that if she can adjust her schedule, she will attend the Double Ten National Day celebrations this year.
This is a show of good will that could lead to political conciliation, but instead, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) has questioned Tsai’s absence from previous National Day celebrations and KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) has ridiculed Tsai, asking if she will be carrying the national flag every day from now on.
Attendance at the National Day celebrations is a political issue. During former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration, pan-blue legislators, including Hung, boycotted the celebrations en masse. When she did attend in 2006, the year of the “red shirt” campaign attempting to unseat Chen, she did so dressed in red to show her support for the campaign.
After President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was elected, the DPP chairperson has been absent from the celebrations, so Tsai’s decision to attend the event with DPP legislators is of course based on political considerations: With big hopes of winning next year’s elections, the party’s willingness to attend National Day celebrations is an expression of their hopes of being able to create an atmosphere conducive to party conciliation.
When former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) first met with Chen following the transfer of power in 2000, he asked Chen to carefully consider the nuclear power issue, but as Lien left the Presidential Office, the DPP Cabinet announced that it would halt construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City. Lien felt that the Chen administration had humiliated him and after that day, the KMT resorted to boycotting and blocking the Chen administration at every turn and obstructing its governance.
The cold war between the KMT and the opposition has continued after Ma was elected president and there was a complete lack of interaction between party leaders, until then-DPP chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) asked for a meeting with Ma in connection with long-term political activist Lin I-hsiung’s (林義雄) hunger strike aimed at forcing a halt to the construction of the Gongliao nuclear power plant.
The result was that it would have been better not to have had a meeting at all and as a resigned DPP gave up all hope of dialogue, the political deadlock continued.
The symbolic significance of the opposition leaders attending the National Day celebrations outweighs any practical significance, but conflict and mutual grudges will not go away just because Ma and Tsai meet and shake hands at the ceremony.
However, that politicians are willing to initiate a thaw in relations will benefit the functioning of party politics, political operations and thus overall national development; therefore such gestures should be encouraged.
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