Tsai Ing-wen’s Mentality of Anxiety for the Decisive Battle in Central Taiwan

  Tsai Ing-wen’s Mentality of Anxiety for the Decisive Battle in Central Taiwan

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

September 4, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

With the registration of candidates for the year-end nine-in-one local elections coming to an end, the ruling and opposition parties both shouted out the slogan "The decisive battle is in central Taiwan." When Tsai Ing-wen went to Taichung for stumping, she even claimed: whether we win or lose depends on central Taiwan; if we win in central Taiwan, the DPP will cross the hurdle in 2020.

Despite the fact that Tsai Ing-wen in her utterances showed confidence in Lin Chia-lung, in internal meetings for stumping, she still played the crisis card; thus we could see Tsai Ing-wen’s acute anxiety. What is on the top of her mind is to forestall the KMT from coming back to power; she wants to insulate the poor governance record at the central government level from affecting the nine-in-one local elections, so as not to threaten the continued DPP administration after 2020.

In fact, for the year-end elections, the DPP has long endlessly upped the ante for construction and budget of central Taiwan, even to the extent of inconformity to the principle of proportionality. In order to maintain its rule in central Taiwan, the Tsai government helped the water/hardware illegal factories in Changhua to extricate themselves, and poured in more resources to help the offshore wind power generation in Changhua, including extending the rapid transit system to Changhua, endlessly playing various infrastructure construction cards. On the one hand, the DPP employs administrative resources to bolster the morale of the locality, using funds from the national coffers to ensure DPP rule; on the other hand, through the iron fist of the Ill-gotten Party Asset Settlement Committee, it cut off the KMT’s connections with funds and manpower, leaving the protagonist no capacity for resistance and counterattack. With such calculations and machinations, while making sure of its every step, one may see Tsai Ing-wen’s diffidence and anxiety lest the KMT may have an opportunity for a comeback. How could this be covered up by its rhetoric of a "backlash of anti-reform forces"?

The voters in central Taiwan find it most difficult to take off their mind is the increasingly deteriorating air pollution environment; this is a threat to the health that many Taichung residents start feeling when they get up to breathe every morning. The KMT has locked in anti-air pollution as the main issue, underscoring the mistakes of the Tsai government’s energy policy, which relies excessively on thermal power generation, making the environment and people’s health in central Taiwan both suffer its ills.

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