The presidential and legislative elections conducted on Saturday were “mostly free, but partly unfair,” because of concerns about an authoritarian legacy and foreign interference, an international election watch group said in Taipei yesterday.
“Taiwan’s autocratic past has become interlinked with pressures from an authoritarian China, which have framed an unfair political context in the elections,” said Michael Danielsen, chairman of Danish group Taiwan Corner.
Danielsen and former US senator and governor of Alaska Frank Murkowski were among 21 observers from eight countries who were invited to Taiwan by the International Commission for Fair Elections in Taiwan (ICFET), a watchdog group of more than 80 international and domestic politicians, academics and democracy advocates, to form an International Election Observation Mission (IEOM).
The mission issued an official statement yesterday after meeting with campaign organizers, staff and candidates, and observing rallies and activities nationwide for the three major political parties between Tuesday and yesterday.
The structural problems of vote-buying, misuse of government power and a huge imbalance in party wealth and resources observed in the elections are at least in part legacies from Taiwan’s authoritarian past, Danielsen said.
Influences from the US and China also posed concerns, in particular those from Beijing, the mission said.
“The cross-strait relations in the context of an economically and politically rising China weighs heavily on the election process in Taiwan. It puts tremendous pressures on Taiwan’s democracy and the freedom and fairness of the choices that its voters must take,” Danielsen said.
“In our view, the fear factor is very important in the elections,” said Gerrit van der Wees, editor of the Taiwan Communique, adding that the factor had built a sense of “fictional stability” for Taiwanese voters.
Murkowski, known for his support for Taiwan’s democracy, said judicial reform should also be in place to ensure fair elections.
The former senator said that fear has been a major factor in people’s deciding which party to support and the “golden rule” — he who has the gold, rules — of political party competition appeared to reflect the imbalanced political situation in Taiwan.
The imbalance between foreign interference and international support for Taiwan’s fair elections was also alarming, said Bruno Kaufmann, president of the Initiative and Referendum Institute Europe, who has observed 11 Taiwanese elections.
The development of Taiwan’s democracy means a lot to Asia, as Taiwan could be a beacon of democracy for all of Asia in the next 20 years, said John Tkacik, senior fellow and director of the International Assessment and Strategy Center’s Future Asia Project.
However, Tkacik warned, looking at what happened in the past 15 years in Hong Kong and Macau, he could not predict what kind of impact China’s system would have on Taiwan in 20 years and it would very likely reflect China’s influence on other Asian democracies over the next 20 years.
“This is the real significance of Taiwan’s democracy. It is a harbinger and a precursor, helping predict the impact of China on democracies throughout the rest of Asia,” he said.
GEARING UP: An invasion would be difficult and would strain China’s forces, but it has conducted large-scale training supporting an invasion scenario, the report said China increased its military pressure on Taiwan last year and took other steps in preparation for a potential invasion, an annual report published by the US Department of Defense on Wednesday showed. “Throughout 2023, Beijing continued to erode longstanding norms in and around Taiwan by employing a range of pressure tactics against Taiwan,” the report said, which is titled “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (PRC) 2024.” The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “is preparing for a contingency to unify Taiwan with the PRC by force, if perceived as necessary by Beijing, while simultaneously deterring, delaying or denying
‘LAGGING BEHIND’: The NATO secretary-general called on democratic allies to be ‘clear-eyed’ about Beijing’s military buildup, urging them to boost military spending NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte mentioning China’s bullying of Taiwan and its ambition to reshape the global order has significance during a time when authoritarian states are continuously increasing their aggression, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. In a speech at the Carnegie Europe think tank in Brussels on Thursday, Rutte said Beijing is bullying Taiwan and would start to “nibble” at Taiwan if Russia benefits from a post-invasion peace deal with Ukraine. He called on democratic allies to boost defense investments and also urged NATO members to increase defense spending in the face of growing military threats from Russia
PEACEFUL RESOLUTION: A statement issued following a meeting between Australia and Britain reiterated support for Taiwan and opposition to change in the Taiwan Strait Canada should support the peaceful resolution of Taiwan’s destiny according to the will of Taiwanese, Canadian lawmakers said in a resolution marking the second anniversary of that nation’s Indo-Pacific strategy on Monday. The Canadian House of Commons committee on Canada-Chinese relations made the comment as part of 34 recommendations for the new edition of the strategy, adding that Ottawa should back Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, first published in October 2022, emphasized that the region’s security, trade, human rights, democracy and environmental protection would play a crucial role in shaping Canada’s future. The strategy called for Canada to deepen
TECH CONFERENCE: Input from industry and academic experts can contribute to future policymaking across government agencies, President William Lai said Multifunctional service robots could be the next new area in which Taiwan could play a significant role, given its strengths in chip manufacturing and software design, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman and chief executive C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said yesterday. “In the past two months, our customers shared a lot of their future plans with me. Artificial intelligence [AI] and AI applications were the most talked about subjects in our conversation,” Wei said in a speech at the National Science and Technology Conference in Taipei. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, counts Nvidia Corp, Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Apple Inc and
RSS