The playing field for next year’s presidential election is getting crowded once more, with Vice President William Lai (賴清德) entering the race for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) for the party he founded.
The three are anything but neophyte candidates — even the least experienced Ko has had eight years of experience, while the old-timer Lai has had 27 years. Until the presidential election next year, the candidates’ past and current remarks and endorsements will be closely scrutinized as indicators of their future leadership.
However, a political disease seems to have stricken the presidential hopefuls in recent campaigns: foot-in-mouth syndrome. The candidate with the worst symptom is none other than Ko, a loose cannon known for making insensitive and outlandish remarks. Loose cannons tend to misfire, and Ko’s gaffes have ranged from sexist remarks to backpedaling and the ill-mannered act of calling presents given by foreign lawmakers “garbage.”
Hou, who started out as a police officer and benefited from the KMT’s past authoritarian regime as a member of the establishment during the White Terror period, is nowhere near as impetuous as Ko. However, the KMT’s party-state mindset still lingers in him. Having received firsthand the KMT’s spoon-fed patriotism of accentuating the sovereignty of the “Republic of China” (ROC), or “anti-Taiwanese independence,” Hou is still repeating the same obsolete slogans and values in his campaigns.
During 38 years of martial law, despite its proclamations of “safeguarding democracy,” his party was the sole culprit in cracking down on other parties and press freedom, introducing literary inquisition and blacklisting, as well as the establishment of long-serving representatives and taking away people’s right to vote for the president directly and hindering the re-election of the national legislature. With full knowledge of the party’s history, Hou has apparently no shame, as he said: “Democracy and freedom is written in the KMT’s DNA.”
If Hou’s proclamation were true, should the KMT not have welcomed the late democracy activist Deng Nan-jung (鄭南榕) with open arms, instead of regarding him as a monkey on their back in 1989? If the party had “democracy written in it,” it would have found it unbecoming not to reward Deng for advocating freedom of speech, let alone ordering a raid that resulted in Deng’s self-immolation.
Furthermore, for one who takes pride in his party’s DNA, Hou would have to be reminded that after the retreat of the KMT to Taiwan, it is the party’s strategies and policies — from former president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) “gentlemen and thieves cannot coexist” to his son Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) three noes of “no contact, no negotiation and no compromise” and former president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) “special state-to-state relations” — that have kept Taiwan and China separate and individually governed.
Hou’s stance of “safeguarding the ROC, defending Taiwan’s democracy and freedom, and maintaining cross-strait peace” seems to be well-rounded, but as the Chinese Communist Party would never agree to such terms, it is high time that Hou put meat on the bones and elaborate on his cross-strait policy.
In contrast, in June 2014, when Lai, then the mayor of Tainan, attended a forum at China’s Fudan University, he touched upon taboo topics like the Tiananmen Square Massacre and elucidated on why China needs to understand Taiwan’s pursuit of independence as a result of its history and development.
So far, Lai’s conduct aligns with his self-proclaimed stance of being a “pragmatic Taiwan independence activist.” The pro-China politicians who shout “Long live the ROC” at campaigns, but become as quiet as a mouse when in China, can never hope to hold a candle to Lai’s character or leadership.
Chang Kuo-tsai is a retired National Hsinchu University of Education associate professor.
Translated by Rita Wang
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