The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) for claiming that Taiwan’s ruling party was guilty of “political manipulation” and that it had lost public support.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) “has lost popular support and its policies run counter to the true mainstream public opinion in Taiwan,” TAO spokesman Chen Binhua (陳斌華) said yesterday, after recall votes against 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers failed the day before.
The DPP is acting in a way that assumes a “fundamental nature of Taiwan independence” and has an “ambition for one-party dominance,” Chen said.
Photo: Chung Li-hua, Taipei Times
The DPP have “ignored the well-being of Taiwanese, and repeatedly stirred up political strife, suppressing political opponents by any means and deepening social divisions,” he said.
These actions have “exposed the party’s fake democracy and demonstrated its real authoritarianism,” he added.
The failure of the recall campaign reflected public resentment and alarm toward the DPP’s manipulation of democracy and monopolization of power, he said.
In response, the MAC said that Beijing’s authorities “lack democratic experience, and therefore have no right to comment on, or misinterpret, Taiwan’s democratic system.”
The recall vote was a concrete example of Taiwan’s democratic constitutional system and a major democratic achievement by Taiwanese and civil society groups, it said.
Such democratic achievements should be protected and upheld by all sectors of society, it added.
The recall results depended on the structure of each electoral district and the individual performance of each legislator, it said, adding that the outcome was a decision made by voters in each district.
“The government’s policy of defending national sovereignty, safeguarding a free and democratic way of life, and rejecting the Chinese Communist Party’s [CCP] ‘united front’ tactics and coercion has not changed,” it said. “This stance reflects the true mainstream opinion of Taiwanese society, and Beijing should not use the recall vote as an excuse for malicious political maneuvers against Taiwan.”
Citizen Congress Watch (CCW), a legislative watchdog, also criticized the TAO’s statements, saying that Beijing should implement democratic systems like the recall vote in China.
“If Beijing had recall voting, it would give Chinese the chance to remove Chinese President Xi Jinping [習近平] from power,” it said.
As the world’s most authoritarian regime, China — where Xi had even amended the Chinese constitution to effectively become ruler for life — should not be accusing others of being “authoritarian,” CCW executive director Leo Chang (張宏林) said.
Although the recalls did not succeed, it did not equate to failure, he said, adding that there were inherent difficulties in the process.
The number of votes for and against the recall fluctuated, and many anti-communist supporters of the DPP were not eligible to vote in the districts where the recalls were held, he said.
“The CCP should not misread the situation. Regardless of the result, the recall votes demonstrated the precious nature of Taiwan’s democracy and that the people of Taiwan do not yearn for China’s authoritarian system,” he said.
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