This interminable blather about party-to-party cooperation continues until we are sick of hearing about it. We no longer want to hear anything about it unless something that actually bears scrutiny as a party-to-party deal has been done. But it won't, at least not in the next few months. And yet the endless talking about it, like some Guantanamo-style psychological torture method, is beginning to cause those of us with functioning intelligences acute mental pain.
First we saw the government and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) flirting with the People First Party (PFP). This was, of course, absurd and everyone knew it to be so, and yet we were told in great earnestness that a deal was just around the corner as soon as PFP Chairman James Soong (
The idea that these two parties could ever find common ground is simply ridiculous. The purpose of the DPP is to retain Taiwan's de facto independent status, and strengthen the identification of the polity with Taiwan, thereby undoing the false consciousness among Taiwanese created by 50 years of the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) colonial rule.
The purpose of the PFP is to engineer the return of Taiwan to China. Its Mainlander supporters would rather be ruled by China than by native Taiwanese -- which is what majority rule in Taiwan really means. There is no overlap of interests between these two parties. Their world views are irreconcilable and the idea of their cooperating, if it was ever earnestly meant, would involve such a cynical abandonment of core values as to make one seriously question the political process it was meant to serve.
It should be obvious that if there is to be any cooperation at all it has to be between parties that are committed to making Taiwan work, not handing it over to a foreign power. There is only one blue-camp contender that fits this description and that is the KMT. But not, unfortunately, all of the KMT. The party is radically split between various Taiwanese and Mainlander factions. To put it simply, most Taiwanese in the KMT want pretty much what the DPP wants -- consolidation of Taiwanese power.
The Mainlanders, on the other hand, don't really know what they want. The more idealistic among them -- the Ma Ying-jeous (
It should be obvious that the pan greens and the Taiwanese KMT have interests in common and could cooperate. But this is impossible while KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
The best thing for Taiwan would be for Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
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