The Presidential Office yesterday announced that President William Lai (賴清德) would today be embarking on a series of stops across the country to engage with members of the public about 10 issues. He would be doing so to promote unity among Taiwanese, the governing and opposition parties, and the nation, the Presidential Office said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) and Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) were quick to respond to the announcement; the former scoffing at Lai’s call for national unity, accusing him of being the main source of division, the latter saying that Lai’s version of unity “begins with fighting with the opposition.”
The Central Election Commission had announced on Friday that the recall vote for 24 KMT legislators would be held on July 26. Hsu and Lo are among the 24, so it is not surprising that they were the ones to respond so quickly to the announcement of Lai’s tour.
Anyone unaware of how KMT legislators had disported themselves in the legislature over the past 16 months might feel some empathy for them. Suffice to say that it has precisely been their disruptive and divisive approach that caused civil society to initiate a mass recall drive. It speaks volumes that all the genuine — not involving partisan fraud — recall motions have been against KMT legislators, and not against the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
The KMT is accusing Lai of being dictatorial, and wants him to intervene and stop the civil actions against its legislators, in the interest of “unity.”
If Lai stepped in and used his power to halt the civil actions, one could only imagine that the KMT would accuse him of being a dictator and quashing democracy.
On Wednesday last week, Lai had arranged a national security briefing, to which he had invited opposition leaders, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌). The invitation had originally been extended during a presidential address on May 20, the anniversary of Lai’s inauguration.
Chu and Huang had expressed interest at the time, but in the days approaching the briefing, they declined to attend, as the format was not to their liking. The decision not to go was not based on the national interest, nor was it a demonstration of leadership. In Huang’s case, it was an expression of his own brand of petulant politics. In Chu’s, it was a strategic misstep.
The TPP does not stand to lose any legislators in this recall movement, as all its current crop are legislators-at-large. However, it would lose considerable influence in the legislature if KMT numbers are reduced.
The KMT could be seriously impacted by the results. Attendance at the national security briefing would have been good optics had Chu wanted to pander to the swing voters. He has chosen to pander instead to his deep-blue base, who revel in his opposition for opposition’s sake.
Support for the central government’s agenda on national security might have reduced some of the voter anger and might have helped the KMT get through the recalls relatively unscathed. The optics of refusal to attend are at least open to a more cynical interpretation, one that already exists in the minds of many Taiwanese: that Chu is more concerned with promoting the agenda of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) than Taiwan’s national interest. Somebody ought to tell him that the CCP is very content with the chaos and disunity he is sowing, but is not concerned about whether the recalls sink the KMT.
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