The three presidential candidates in Saturday’s election presented their agendas during debates late last month. The cross-examination portion of the debates revealed how each of them would approach certain issues.
However, before voting, keep the following in mind.
First, are their political agendas feasible?
Voters should have learned a lesson from former Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜). Do not be tricked by some grand agendas. When a candidate can speak beautifully about almost everything, it means they can be deceptive.
Today, many politicians are skilled at presenting their proposals. It is as if the presidential debate is a speech contest. Some of those politicians shamelessly offer voters blank checks.
For example, even though Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) could not answer a question about G7 countries during questioning at the Legislative Yuan, he could still make an effort and show off their knowledge about the world during the presidential debates by memorizing everything on paper.
In this sense, when presidential candidates present their agendas, voters must be extra careful about what they say. Think carefully about whether those agendas are feasible.
Some candidates talked about giving subsidies for childcare, university tuition, rent and so on. Is any of it really feasible? Some even added more subsidies, which obviously cannot be done.
One candidate proposed allowing young people to take out a maximum mortgage of NT$15 million (US$483,512) from banks without making a down payment. Is this proposal a trick? For homebuyers, even if a down payment can be waived, they have to pay the rest of the loan one way or the other. When first-time homebuyers realize that they have to pay a huge amount off for years to come, would that be the last straw for them?
Second, carefully evaluate whether the candidates are reliable. To put it straightforwardly, no matter how appealing a proposal is, any political agenda that cannot be immediately implemented remains a blueprint. If a candidate loses the election, they and their proposals would soon be forgotten.
Even if they are elected, it would not a big deal for them to break their promises, and voters can do nothing about it.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) “6-3-3” agenda is a good example. Ma said that if he fell short of the “6-3-3” targets (6 percent annual GDP growth, an unemployment rate of less than 3 percent and US$30,000 annual per capita income), he would donate half of his salary, which he did not.
Voters must not be deceived again by flowery speech. It is not enough to listen to what the candidates say, but also observe what they have done over the past few years. Fortunately, the three candidates have left some records to review.
In 2018, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) candidate, said that for the sake of city residents, the handling of nuclear waste should be a top priority. Now, without having solved the nuclear waste issue, Hou has said that he would seek to reactivate the nuclear power plants in New Taipei City’s Shihmen (石門) and Guosheng (萬里) districts.
In 2011, Taiwan People’s Party Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said that acceptance of the so-called “1992 consensus” would be kowtowing and surrendering to China. Now, he says the “1992 consensus” should not be stigmatized, and should be renamed.
For Ko, it is as if the act of renaming it would solve all the problems, after which Taiwanese and Chinese would become a family. Presidential candidates make flippant comments like that all the time. He would deny whatever he says as he sees fit.
Voters should know that no presidential candidate can be considered a saint. At the very least, they should not be liars, and no one wants a trickster to be the president.
Chang Kuo-tsai is a retired associate professor of National Hsinchu University of Education.
Translated by Emma Liu
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