Social media have for the past two weeks been on fire with topics such as sexual harassment, the alleged drugging of children at a New Taipei City preschool and Taiwanese traffic being a “living hell” for pedestrians.
These issues all concern individual rights and welfare, and affect Taiwanese regardless of their political affiliation, as they are structural issues that can befall anyone. Since the issues are mostly associated with long-term gender inequality, labor, economy and culture, politicians tend to give them a wide berth as they cannot be solved in the short term.
As these are long-term structural issues, examples could rear their ugly heads during any politician’s tenure, regardless of political affiliation. Therefore, when such incidents happen, the public should use the opportunity to put incumbent politicians to the test, to see whether they can propose solutions to rectify the situation and address underlying problems.
However, what we see more often is that politicians tend to say these issues are “historical” in nature as an excuse to avoid reform, or to resort to “what aboutism” and point similar blunders by the opposition party as an excuse, or even worse, divert the public’s attention with other issues.
As each person is part of society, there are things that they have to take into their hands to address long-term issues and prevent their rights being ignored.
One way is to keep themselves updated and follow up on issues, so that elected officials know the needs and requirements of voters.
To prevent people from being led by the nose by media framing, they could look at the trending issues on social media platforms in the following ways:
For issues that are regarded as “historical,” people should bear in mind that every incumbent politician, whether a civil representative or official, has the responsibility to bring about reform, instead of pointing fingers at others or arguing how the issue came to be.
If a politician says that only cities under the governance of a certain party would have such issues, or accuses the party in charge of another city or county as doing an even worse job, they are evading responsibility and are waiting for the next issue to come along and divert the public’s attention.
Next, as the saying goes, “actions speak louder than words.” People should monitor what actions politicians take to address issues, and not take their word for it. They need to see whether they have led constructive debate on the matter or promoted actions that facilitate change. If they only came up with a slogan, but did not flesh it out with substantive proposals, people would know that they are only wheedling the electorate.
Further, people should avoid falling into ideological traps. Some would frame issues as an ideological conflict between supporters of different parties, for example by contending that supporting women’s rights means oppressing men and traditional values, so only those with leftist and anti-capitalist sentiments would say yes to childcare, or that fighting for pedestrians’ rights is bullying drivers and storeowners.
Such discussions that incite division and hinder reform also help politicians get away with not fulfilling their duties and responsibilities. Unfortunately, it usually takes certain people’s sacrifice or major accidents before such issues get properly addressed.
However, if people can prevent getting distracted and keep on pressing issues that need to be tackled, then the victims’ tears and blood would not have been shed in vain.
Chang Yueh-han is an adjunct assistant professor in Shih Hsin University’s Department of Journalism.
Translated by Rita Wang
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the
Many local news media last week reported that COVID-19 is back, citing doctors’ observations and the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) statistics. The CDC said that cases would peak this month and urged people to take preventive measures. Although COVID-19 has never been eliminated, it has become more manageable, and restrictions were dropped, enabling people to return to their normal way of life due to decreasing hospitalizations and deaths. In Taiwan, mandatory reporting of confirmed cases and home isolation ended in March last year, while the mask mandate at hospitals and healthcare facilities stopped in May. However, the CDC last week said the number