With three weeks to go before the presidential and legislative elections, the major parties and their candidates continue to engage in mudslinging rather than policy debate, thereby threatening the nation’s democracy.
The issue is of such seriousness that five advocacy groups on Tuesday jointly petitioned candidates to change their focus. Even when candidates talk about policy, such as promising subsidies and benefits, they do not say where the money is coming from, Taiwan Youth Association for Democracy managing director Eddy Lin (林彥廷) said.
However, most of the candidates’ public statements have been allegations, such as the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) attempting to link Internet commentator Yang Hui-ju (楊蕙如) to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and the DPP criticizing Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the KMT’s presidential candidate, for owning various “expensive” properties, thereby disqualifying him as an “everyman.”
Negative campaigning is not unique to Taiwan, but wherever it is used, it only alienates swing voters and reduces voter turnout, political science researcher Gina Garramone wrote in a 2009 Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media article. While motivating a candidate’s support base, negative campaigning resulted in greater image discrimination against the candidate and greater attitude polarization, she said.
Columnist John Ellis wrote in a 2006 Wall Street Journal article that the results of negative campaigning is “voter resignation and ultimately a kind of doomed acceptance.”
Qualified people abstain from voting or other forms of political engagement in the face of such mudslinging, Ellis wrote, citing the New York State Republican Party’s inability to secure a qualified state comptroller in 2006.
On Tuesday, Han lambasted the DPP for mudslinging, but then turned around and made allegations about DPP members and the central government. The DPP has been chasing him with “cybertroops,” Han said, before accusing Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) of being “completely clueless” about development projects in Kaohsiung. The central government has offered no support, he said, adding that “every day it tries to block things I do and keeps making predictions about Kaohsiung going downhill.”
On Wednesday last week, former premier Simon Chang (張善政), the KMT’s vice presidential candidate, lamented the state of campaigning before launching an attack on the DPP.
“There has never been so much mudslinging and negative campaigning for a presidential election,” he said. “The reason is simple: The DPP has barely achieved anything worth mentioning in the past three-and-a-half years.”
KMT Chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) on Wednesday defended sexist remarks that he had made about President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), and then tried to discredit Tsai and her administration. Under Tsai, all sectors of the economy have suffered, he wrote on Facebook, even though, according to information from the World Bank, last year’s GDP of US$589.39 billion was an historic high for Taiwan.
Also on the offensive throughout the campaign, the DPP’s most recent push has been to call on the KMT to redact retired lieutenant general Wu Sz-huai (吳斯懷) from its list of legislator-at-large nominees.
Wu Sz-huai’s stance on China might put him at odds with the general public, but this should not be the DPP’s focus. A candidate’s argument for receiving someone’s vote should not be “because that other guy over there is a terrible choice.”
Political campaigning in the nation needs an overhaul. If the public cannot grasp a party’s platform, many people might simply abstain from voting, which would harm the democratic process.
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