On Dec. 11, CTi News’ last day of broadcasting after its license renewal was denied by the National Communications Commission, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) held what they billed as an international news conference.
Wearing black suits to mark the gravity of the situation, they said that they were mourning the death of freedom of speech in Taiwan.
During their opening remarks, both had to deal with faulty microphones, with the signal sporadically being dropped and their voices intermittently silenced. They took it in good humor, but appeared to miss the joke, although it did serve to add symbolism to the proceedings.
It was not so much the symbolism of their freedom of expression being stifled: It was more the theatrical flair of the occasion, because — make no mistake — this was less about the issue at hand and more about the KMT’s long game of trying to portray President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) as a wannabe dictator and her administration as a fledgling party-state autocracy.
Invoking the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Chiang said that the government was suppressing freedom of speech and abusing the state apparatus to this end, likening the commission to a secret police working under Tsai’s direction. He talked of how Taiwan was on the path to a “dictatorship,” a word he used liberally during the news conference to refer to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and to Tsai.
Following Chiang’s comments, Ma was handed a faulty mic and started lamenting the state of affairs, saying: “This is a one-party autocracy and a one-woman dictatorship,” which had pushed freedom of speech “to the abyss.”
Clearly, “dictator,” “dictatorship,” “autocracy” and “stifling of freedom of speech” were the keywords of the day. In that regard, it was job well done for Ma and Chiang.
The issue of US pork imports containing ractopamine residue has been another platform the KMT has jumped on to get its message across.
Chiang on Tuesday accused the DPP of using “the tyranny of its [legislative] majority” to “crush public opinion” and push through a vote on directives regarding the US pork and beef import policy.
If anyone knows anything about Taiwanese politics, including how the KMT has conducted itself previously when it had a legislative majority, they would understand how disingenuous a claim this was. Still, it did not matter how many people bought it, as Chiang did what he needed to do, which was to notch up another keyword: “tyranny.”
The issues that the KMT purports to care about are worth exploring. Freedom of expression is a fragile thing that needs constant monitoring, and there still is no scientific consensus on the long-term health effects of eating meat with traces of ractopamine. However, the KMT is broaching these issues in bad faith, with its eyes on a different prize: a return to political power, by conjuring up a false portrayal of the DPP overseeing a one-party state orchestrated by a dictator jealously guarding her grip on the presidency.
Former Taipei Veterans General Hospital physician Su Wei-shuo (蘇偉碩) is under investigation for circulating falsehoods about the health risks of ractopamine. He has in the past made some pretty far-fetched statements, saying that it was 250 times more toxic than ecstasy and that if it were to be imported into the ecosystem, the air would be infused with it, “so that people will inhale it just by breathing.”
Su has walked back some of his more excessive statements, yet the KMT supported him, painting him as another victim of a “dictatorial” administration, with Chiang writing on Facebook that the DPP’s behavior risks turning Taiwan into a “false democracy and a true dictatorship.”
There goes that keyword again.
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