After nearly four years of rebuilding a party that in 2008 had been reduced to a pale shadow of itself, former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has good reason to worry about the direction the party seems to be taking since she stepped down.
While Tsai, for various reasons, failed in her bid to unseat President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in the Jan. 14 election, she demonstrated her vision and maturity as party leader, a role she had assumed on May 20, 2008, the day Ma was first inaugurated.
On that day, few people would have thought that the DPP, after suffering resounding defeats in the legislative and presidential elections, and hit by scandals surrounding former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), could, a mere four years later, again present a credible challenge to Ma and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Tsai accomplished just that, giving hope to many that the KMT would not go unchallenged in what are challenging times for Taiwan.
All those accomplishments are being threatened now by a party leadership battle that appears to have lost all sense of purpose and direction. Since Tsai stepped down as chairperson on March 1, the DPP has fallen into disarray, unable to propose any clear policies, while constantly resorting to all-out attacks against Ma and his policies.
This reflex action was taken to an extreme when DPP legislators announced they would seek to recall Ma with little more than a week left in his first term in office.
Although Ma’s popularity has fallen to record lows in recent weeks following a series of bungled policy proposals, the only thing that the pan-green camp achieved with its recall motion was to unify the KMT, which, facing a crisis of its own, was starting to show cracks in its foundations — including legislators jumping ship on important votes in the legislature.
Had the DPP acted with caution and maturity on the matter, if only by limiting itself to protests, the disunity within the KMT could have widened, which in turn would have allowed the pan-green camp to reach out to potential allies within the pan-blue camp. Now that opportunity seems lost and the pan-blue camp, seeing its leader under siege, has rallied around, scuttling any chance of credible, interdenominational pressure on the president and the executive.
Furthermore, by acting in this manner, the DPP is sounding like a sore loser and telling us that rather than rebuild itself — as it did over the previous four years — following its defeat in the January presidential election, it would resort to desperate measures, which is what the recall attempt certainly was.
As for the voices within the pan-green camp who, looking at Ma’s low popularity rating, argue that if an election were held today the DPP would win, they are missing the point altogether. Opinion polls are not elections and how one responds to each is contingent on very different considerations. Disliking Ma does not automatically translate into not voting for him and his party.
Ma’s unpopularity at the moment is the result of several things, a combination of ineptitude, yes, but also the necessity to make difficult decisions, such as raising fuel and electricity prices. Choices that the DPP, had it prevailed in January, would also likely have had to make.
For the future of this nation, the pan-green camp must abandon such self-defeating strategies, which can only alienate the various segments of the polity that it will depend on if it is ever to run the Presidential Office again. Let us hope that whoever is voted the next DPP chairman has the wisdom and ability to ensure that desperation does not aliment the party’s behavior.
US President Donald Trump has gotten off to a head-spinning start in his foreign policy. He has pressured Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States, threatened to take over the Panama Canal, urged Canada to become the 51st US state, unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” and announced plans for the United States to annex and administer Gaza. He has imposed and then suspended 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for their roles in the flow of fentanyl into the United States, while at the same time increasing tariffs on China by 10
As an American living in Taiwan, I have to confess how impressed I have been over the years by the Chinese Communist Party’s wholehearted embrace of high-speed rail and electric vehicles, and this at a time when my own democratic country has chosen a leader openly committed to doing everything in his power to put obstacles in the way of sustainable energy across the board — and democracy to boot. It really does make me wonder: “Are those of us right who hold that democracy is the right way to go?” Has Taiwan made the wrong choice? Many in China obviously
US President Donald Trump last week announced plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on eight countries. As Taiwan, a key hub for semiconductor manufacturing, is among them, the policy would significantly affect the country. In response, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) dispatched two officials to the US for negotiations, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) board of directors convened its first-ever meeting in the US. Those developments highlight how the US’ unstable trade policies are posing a growing threat to Taiwan. Can the US truly gain an advantage in chip manufacturing by reversing trade liberalization? Is it realistic to
Last week, 24 Republican representatives in the US Congress proposed a resolution calling for US President Donald Trump’s administration to abandon the US’ “one China” policy, calling it outdated, counterproductive and not reflective of reality, and to restore official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, enter bilateral free-trade agreement negotiations and support its entry into international organizations. That is an exciting and inspiring development. To help the US government and other nations further understand that Taiwan is not a part of China, that those “one China” policies are contrary to the fact that the two countries across the Taiwan Strait are independent and
RSS