With exactly a month to go before the Dec. 5 three-in-one local government and township elections, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) launched its campaign on Wednesday, calling on voters to punish the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government for its poor performance.
After almost two years in the wilderness following the DPP’s crushing defeats in legislative and presidential elections, and the ongoing struggle to contain the fallout from former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) saga, the DPP seems confident that now is a good time to start its comeback.
The present conditions are certainly favorable, as the KMT finds itself beset with problems.
Aside from the numerous splits it faces in the county commissioner races, the KMT goes into the elections with a poor record at national level since returning to power. Pre-election promises on the economy and the benefits of increased cross-strait interaction have failed to materialize, and despite having a legislative majority the KMT still seems to have trouble passing any legislation of substance.
The government’s handling of several problems, including Typhoon Morakot and now the US beef controversy, has made a mockery of the KMT’s oft-repeated claims during the Chen administration that only it had the experience to govern.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has proved to be anything but the smooth operator his pre-election imagery promised. It turns out the Keystone Cops would have been a more accurate image.
As a weak leader, Ma’s decision to take over as KMT chairman is only likely to increase his problems if early indications — such as the party’s recent Central Standing Committee election fiasco — are anything to go by.
Worst of all, the KMT has cozied up to the Chinese Communist Party in ways that pose a real threat to the nation’s democracy and independence.
While it is true that local elections focus mainly on local issues, the poor performance of the government cannot fail to have some effect on the appeal of KMT candidates.
Nevertheless, the DPP cannot afford to rest on its laurels.
Simply lambasting the KMT for doing a terrible job may be an effective, risk-free strategy for now — after all, it’s a strategy the KMT used successfully — and doing so certainly provides the DPP with plenty of ammunition, but it will not help the party solidify support for future elections.
Two years is a long time in politics, so even if the DPP does do well next month, it will need something else to fall back on should the government manage to get its act together and navigate its way to 2012 on the back of an improving economy while avoiding any more major mishaps.
At the local level, the DPP did lots of good work post-Morakot at the grassroots level, but this was in the south where support is already strong. The DPP really needs to build on this and formulate a concerted, long-term effort to make inroads into areas north of the Jhuoshuei River (濁水溪), taking the battle against the KMT into the pan-blue heartlands. This will not be easy.
On a national scale, meanwhile, first and foremost the DPP needs to come up with a coherent China policy ahead of 2012, as Taiwan’s giant rival is an issue that any prospective government needs to tackle head-on.
With Taiwan’s future at stake, the DPP cannot afford to rely solely on disappointed KMT voters and the cyclical changes of power that occur in mature democracies, because unlike other nations, Taiwan has powerful external forces working to make sure that doesn’t happen.
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
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS