President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday marked his first full year in office, delivering a speech in the morning just as the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation released the results of a survey on his performance.
The poll showed that Lai was regarded as strong on foreign policy, national defense and sovereignty issues, but the chaos in the legislature has left him perceived as doing poorly on domestic matters. Foundation chairman Michael You (游盈隆) said that Lai needs to do more to promote cooperation with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) lawmakers. Lai scored an average of 57.14, which is considered a “fail,” You said. However, ideological divisions in Taiwan make it challenging for any president to reach the passing grade of 60, he added. Lai’s immediate predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), only scored 52.41 in a similar survey after her first year in office, he said.
One could be forgiven for thinking that Lai’s speechwriters had studied the results of the survey, and had taken some of the points to heart, although, in the end, they could not rein themselves in completely. Quiet concessions to legislative cooperation early in the speech were followed by a 460-character barely veiled dig at the legislative chaos the KMT and TPP have wrought over the past year.
If the speech was supposed to be inspiring, Lai let the public down. There is no written rule that presidential addresses have to be dry. Perhaps the 460-character dig, sandwiched between a long section on business and trade — taking up a full third of the speech — and a brief mention of the Computex trade show in Taipei before he wrapped up, was designed as a bit of spice for the audience, or catharsis for the speaker.
Lai did not mention China once in his speech; he kept to Taiwan’s domestic situation and its international and trade relations with partners. After a brief mention of the tragic incident that had occurred the day before outside an elementary school in New Taipei City’s Sansia District (三峽), he turned to what his administration was doing on climate change, the promotion of health and social resilience, and efforts to reach net zero emissions by 2030, improving air quality and increasing health standards.
He said he looked forward to “mutual support” from the ruling and opposition parties. He liked the phrase so much that he said it twice. Talk about the audacity of hope, to borrow a phrase from another president.
The appeals for legislative cooperation and a mention of cross-party delegations to attend the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, “despite the domestic political situation,” notwithstanding, the veiled dig toward the end was replete with phrases that could certainly be read as pushback against the accusations by the KMT that Lai is behaving like a dictator, that the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) somehow represents “green communism,” that the ongoing mass recall movement was organized by the DPP and not grassroots citizens concerned about Taiwan’s democracy, or the demonization of those citizens for standing up and making their voices heard, or that Lai was trying to reinstate martial law.
Lai spoke of democracy being “a display of national strength,” and of how Taiwan “was once the country with the world’s longest martial law period, but now we are a beacon of democracy in Asia.” He spoke of how the younger generation is able to “proactively engage in politics, protect the nation [and] further entrench democracy ... through all manner of constitutional and legal means.”
He finished the dig with the hope that the leaders of all parties can prioritize the nation’s interests and uphold national security, “grounded in shared facts.”
You is right to suggest that Lai try harder to cooperate with the opposition. Unfortunately, it takes two to tango.
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