The presidential candidates of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) — New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) and TPP Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) — have been repeating the mantra that more than 60 percent of the public want a new party in government.
This is an obvious ploy to help the “divide and conquer” strategy that the “blue-white alliance” is working on to incite “down with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)” sentiment.
The idea that there is desire for a transition of power seems to have been invented, because opinion polls and media reports do not support it.
According to Internet searches since July, the idea was first thrown into the public arena by the KMT and the TPP.
Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation chairman Michael You (游盈隆) wrote on Facebook on July 31 that he was aware that a notion of changing the party in government was floating around, but that it was not backed by any data.
The idea could have been a deduction made from reading online surveys, You said.
However, online surveys — regardless of the calculation method used — generally have no way to accurately surmise what the public is thinking.
On Sept. 12, CNEWS published an online survey that asked: As the DPP has been in power for eight years, do you think there should be a change in next year’s election?
Of the respondents, 65.1 percent supported a change, with 39.7 percent “strongly agreeing” and 25.4 percent “somewhat agreeing.”
However, the survey’s accuracy is questionable. The distribution of the political affiliations of the respondents was plain as day and CNEWS claimed that while Vice President William Lai (賴清德), the DPP’s presidential candidate, was most favored, the combined support for the other three candidates surpassed him. Using that to say most favor a new party in power is a tenuous conclusion.
Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱), spokesman for Lai’s election campaign, on Nov. 1 said opposition parties claim that as support for Lai is 35 percent, the rest want the DPP to step down. By the same logic, with support for Hou and Ko at about 20 percent apiece, 80 percent would not want the KMT and the TPP to govern, he said.
The “transition of power” rumor was fabricated to favor the anti-DPP coalition.
What is remarkable about the CNEWS survey was that a cross analysis showed significant support for the campaign of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘), although more recent polling indicates that Gou might be a spent force.
However, if the anti-DPP coalition had been genuine about a strategy to unite, they should have been vying to enlist Gou and his supporters.
If Hou and Ko are betting that the “1+1=2 model” works for combining campaigns, they should be pulling out all the stops to establish a blue-white alliance, not dragging their heels.
This indicates that the idea of a groundswell for a change in governing party is propaganda — a meme favoring the alliance, with each side of it seeking to ally with their secondary enemy to bring down the DPP, their main rival.
This kind of manipulation is reminiscent of Chinese interference. It looks as if the KMT and the TPP are following China’s orders. Such “united front” tactics are among three tools that Beijing uses to overcome its enemies.
Taiwanese should be wary of specious rumors such as “60 percent want a new party in power.” Voters should take such notions with a pinch of salt and apply some critical thinking. They should prevent the TPP and the KMT, which are singing to China’s tune, from furthering their ill-intentioned agenda.
Chen Ching-kuen is an assistant professor.
Translated by Rita Wang
Taiwan has lost Trump. Or so a former State Department official and lobbyist would have us believe. Writing for online outlet Domino Theory in an article titled “How Taiwan lost Trump,” Christian Whiton provides a litany of reasons that the William Lai (賴清德) and Donald Trump administrations have supposedly fallen out — and it’s all Lai’s fault. Although many of Whiton’s claims are misleading or ill-informed, the article is helpfully, if unintentionally, revealing of a key aspect of the MAGA worldview. Whiton complains of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s “inability to understand and relate to the New Right in America.” Many
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) earlier this month raised its travel alert for China’s Guangdong Province to Level 2 “Alert,” advising travelers to take enhanced precautions amid a chikungunya outbreak in the region. More than 8,000 cases have been reported in the province since June. Chikungunya is caused by the chikungunya virus and transmitted to humans through bites from infected mosquitoes, most commonly Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. These species thrive in warm, humid climates and are also major vectors for dengue, Zika and yellow fever. The disease is characterized by high fever and severe, often incapacitating joint pain.
In nature, there is a group of insects known as parasitoid wasps. Their reproductive process differs entirely from that of ordinary wasps — the female lays her eggs inside or on the bodies of other insects, and, once hatched, the larvae feed on the host’s body. The larvae do not kill the host insect immediately; instead, they carefully avoid vital organs, allowing the host to stay alive until the larvae are fully mature. That living reservoir strategy ensures a stable and fresh source of nutrients for the larvae as they grow. However, the host’s death becomes only a matter of time. The resemblance
Most countries are commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II with condemnations of militarism and imperialism, and commemoration of the global catastrophe wrought by the war. On the other hand, China is to hold a military parade. According to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, Beijing is conducting the military parade in Tiananmen Square on Sept. 3 to “mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.” However, during World War II, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had not yet been established. It
RSS