Sun, Dec 17, 2023 page8

• Debate policies, not personal issues

  • By Knight Chang 張天泰
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  The presidential election is less than a month away. In the past few days, both the blue and white camps have been criticizing Vice President William Lai (賴清德), the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) presidential candidate, on the legality of property his family owns in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里). The blue and white camps focused on Lai’s old family house precisely because they could not take issue with Lai in other aspects. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), in particular, tried to connect Lai’s old house controversy with KMT Legislator Ma Wen-chun’s (馬文君) case of illegally occupying public land. What they have been doing is to shift the focus from Ma to Lai, as the KMT said Lai’s credibility should be questioned.

  Apparently, the illegal structure of Lai’s old family home resulted from a number of wrong policies. Lai and his family are actually the victims here. The government has not yet laid out plans to deal with old houses in the coal mining area. Lai’s family property is one among many such structures in the area. Official agencies should solve this problem in a practical way and help coal miners to settle down and live in peace.

  The blue and white camps keep highlighting the controversy over Lai’s old house and attacking a single individual. It is obvious that the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) cannot win the election by criticizing the DPP. The three major political parties should instead invest much more in public policy debate. Taiwan’s democratic elections are not merely about campaigning and voting, but also about discussion, reasoning and debating with one another. Public policy debate is an established tradition of all democracies, and in Taiwan particularly, it is significant to the process of its democratization.

  Taiwan has been a democracy for some time. However, since the launch of the nationwide election — an important landmark for a country’s democratization — the specter of national identification has been present. It has given rise to a series of issues concerning one’s ancestral provincial origins, political party affiliation, and south-north residential roots and so on. These issues are manipulated and handled in accordance with each particular party’s interests, and usually, these issues would become the focus point of election campaigns.

  Moreover, some politicians exploit these issues and frame them in a certain way, leading the public to think uncritically and confining Taiwanese to behave in an either-or manner. As a result, the most precious element of a democratic system, namely multiple parties competing with one another fair and square, cannot be fully put into effect. This is an impediment in which Taiwanese society has been trapped — a trap characterized by the blue-green binary opposition. Without a true competitive environment involving all players, public policy debate in Taiwan — which should be considered the most important activity of the election — cannot be implemented. The public cannot grasp the content of public policy. Rather than repetitively emphasizing the blue and green camps and their contention, it is much more important to draw voters’ attention to public policy.

  Politicians should not work themselves up by underscoring the election campaign and voting; instead, they must shed light on the public policy debate to enhance the democratic process that Taiwan is in. Only in doing so can they keep the nation moving forward.

  Taiwan is counting down to its crucial presidential election. The blue and white camps keep drawing voters’ attention to conjured controversy about Lai’s old family home. Such a move is far from constructive. They should highlight the importance of public policy debate and each political party’s proposed agendas: housing justice, the widening inequality gap between rich and poor, low fertility rates, equal opportunity for education and food safety.

  Other issues related to indigenous Taiwanese, migrant workers, immigrants, gender equality, long-term care services, childcare services and tax system reform are also important. Many more problems should also be touched upon through debate, including social housing, traffic regulation, the right to a residence, low wages, working conditions, agriculture, environmental issues and energy planning, the right to assembly and protest, the preservation of cultural assets, human rights protections, constitutional reforms, congressional reforms, judicial reforms, trade agreements with foreign countries, cross-strait diplomacy, national defense and the rehabilitation of wrongful convictions.

  It is especially important to cope with the following issues in a pragmatic way: low fertility rates, housing justice, the gap between rich and poor, and traffic problems. Representing the major political parties of the green, blue and white camps, Lai, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), the KMT’s presidential candidate, and TPP Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je should put more effort into presenting their agendas at the public policy debate. This is the truly effective way to win votes.

  Knight Chang is a political worker and doctor of education.

  Translated by Emma Liu
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