I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat,
and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
When you're gloomy there is nothing like Eliot to make you even more so. But how well Prufrock sums up Saturday's events. The Taiwanese were being called upon in rally after rally by Chen Shui-bian (
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
the Taiwanese voters respond pragmatically "Crisis? Certainly not!"
Let us not pretend that it wasn't disappointing. That a majority of Taiwanese could cast their votes for the parties of thugs, thieves, fraudsters, and scam artists, the parties of bagmen, gangsters, unreconstructed fascists, torturers and murderers beggars belief. Any progressive can only sympathize with Simon Bolivar's bitter last words: "He who serves the revolution ploughs the sea."
But the pan-greens can hardly escape blame for the debacle. There has been a lot of talk of their being too optimistic, running too many candidates and as a result spreading their vote too thinly. Then again there were total messes like Taipei City's second district where vote allocation simply fell apart.
But the disappointment was not the result of tactical failure, but strategic mistakes that were made at the very top. Chen chose to run a presidential election campaign for a legislative election. This means that he centered on symbolic issues of identity politics in a campaign which should have been about the basics -- support for farmers, opening direct links for businesspeople, pensions for the elderly, more school spending, a sustainable National Health Insurance system. Legislative elections in Taiwan are about pork-barrel issues -- the Taiwan voter's fundamental question to a candidate is not "what do you stand for " but "what can you give to me/get for me?" And here the pan-blues with their long practice of clientalism do actually have a better history of bringing home the bacon.
The election is being interpreted everywhere as a rejection of Taiwan separatism. Certainly there was a sense that themes from Chen's campaigning would, if realized, raise tensions with China. But there was also a wide realization that many of these would be impossible to attain, given that the pan-greens would never win the super-majority needed to make constitutional changes on their own. So there was a strange hollowness about the DPP's Chen-centered campaign, an emptiness that resulted in some 2.25 million who voted green in March -- a third of the total votes for Chen -- not showing up at the polls Saturday.
But while voters might have balked at the risky road the DPP seemed to be taking, Taiwan consciousness is not going to go away. Remember it was the strongly pro-reunification People First Party that was the big loser in the election, seeing a quarter of its seats go to the more moderate Chinese Nationalist Party.
For Taiwan-consciousness proselytizers, the message is clear: Do more work. Surely you didn't think that something that elsewhere has taken decades, is going to be accomplished in four or five years? You cannot create a sense of national identity, or national destiny in a handful of election campaigns. Building Taiwan as a nation has to go beyond political campaigning and find its way through civil society into people's hearts. Enough of politics -- for now.
It is employment pass renewal season in Singapore, and the new regime is dominating the conversation at after-work cocktails on Fridays. From September, overseas employees on a work visa would need to fulfill the city-state’s new points-based system, and earn a minimum salary threshold to stay in their jobs. While this mirrors what happens in other countries, it risks turning foreign companies away, and could tarnish the nation’s image as a global business hub. The program was announced in 2022 in a bid to promote fair hiring practices. Points are awarded for how a candidate’s salary compares with local peers, along
China last month enacted legislation to punish —including with the death penalty — “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists.” The country’s leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), need to be reminded about what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has said and done in the past. They should think about whether those historical figures were also die-hard advocates of Taiwanese independence. The Taiwanese Communist Party was established in the Shanghai French Concession in April 1928, with a political charter that included the slogans “Long live the independence of the Taiwanese people” and “Establish a republic of Taiwan.” The CCP sent a representative, Peng
Japan and the Philippines on Monday signed a defense agreement that would facilitate joint drills between them. The pact was made “as both face an increasingly assertive China,” and is in line with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s “effort to forge security alliances to bolster the Philippine military’s limited ability to defend its territorial interests in the South China Sea,” The Associated Press (AP) said. The pact also comes on the heels of comments by former US deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, who said at a forum on Tuesday last week that China’s recent aggression toward the Philippines in
The Ministry of National Defense on Tuesday announced that the military would hold its annual Han Kuang exercises from July 22 to 26. Military officers said the exercises would feature unscripted war games, and a decentralized command and control structure. This year’s exercises underline the recent reforms in Taiwan’s military as it transitions from a top-down command structure to one where autonomy is pushed down to the front lines to improve decisionmaking and adaptability. Militaries around the world have been observing and studying Russia’s war in Ukraine. They have seen that the Ukrainian military has been much quicker to adapt to