The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has elected a new chairwoman, Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文). She is taking over at a difficult time for the party: Tomorrow the DPP hands over the reins of government to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and once again joins the ranks of the opposition.
The DPP’s political fortunes are foundering. The party controls just eight county and city governments in the south and 27 of the 113 seats in the legislature. It will have great difficulties in blocking any KMT attempt to amend the Constitution, not to mention introducing or influencing legislation and budget decisions.
The DPP won’t just be an opposition party, it will be a weak one.
Tsai also has to deal with party debt totaling hundreds of millions of NT dollars. To be able to handle the DPP’s financial problems and meet the obligations of an opposition party, Tsai must reform the organization and streamline its staff.
She must also deal with calls to end government corruption and ensure a government that is working for Taiwan. The corruption scandals of the past eight years have damaged any claims of the party to clean government. The carelessness of the top leadership — exposed when the Papua New Guinea fund scandal erupted earlier this month — has seriously damaged the nation’s image in addition to wasting US$30 million.
With DPP approval ratings at only 18 percent, any attempt to turn public opinion will be difficult.
Another point of great concern is party unity. The competition between Yu Shyi-kun, Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) and Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) to be the party’s presidential nomination revealed rifts that have yet to heal. During the party chairperson election campaign, festering differences between the dismantled factions surfaced once again. It was just luck that the two candidates restrained themselves and their supporters in an attempt to fight a clean campaign and avoid a new factional war.
Although the party faces a host of problems, it is still an important political asset for Taiwan. The DPP government’s contribution to Taiwan’s democratic and human rights development over the past eight years cannot be denied. It has also had an active part in strengthening the Taiwanese identity.
The DPP will remain the most important opposition party and the only one capable of monitoring the KMT.
As the KMT turns enthusiastically to China, the DPP will also be the only protector of Taiwanese identity and interests that could stop Taiwan from being sucked into a whirlwind pro-unification campaign.
The DPP is in tatters, but this could prove to Tsai’s advantage. Now that the party has nothing, there will be less to hold her back. So long as she can maintain the party’s core values, she will be able to push through her proposals for party reform.
If the party sticks to democracy, liberty and concern for Taiwan and works to repair its image, it will be doing more constructive things than it has over the past eight years. Only then would a return to government be possible.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS