Now Without “Eleven Bandits,” the DPP Has But a Uniform Mouthpiece

 Now Without “Eleven Bandits,” the DPP Has But a Uniform Mouthpiece

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

December 11, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

After the disastrous defeat in the 9-in-1 local elections on November 24^th, a brouhaha once appeared inside the DPP, with demands from all quarters for generational change. However, in just two weeks, everything seems to have returned to silence; everyone quietly accepted the personnel lineup for party chairmanship and premiership that was arranged by the factions in private. The old-line agreed upon but not announced within the party is "continuing to consolidate the central leadership." Refusing to self-reflect in the aftermath of an electoral avalanche, not willing to make revisions, while going against vox populi, this is veritably a disappointing scene.

Tracing the origin of the "Eleventh Bandits," it started with the local elections of 2005 when the DPP suffered a stunning defeat owing to the bias and incompetence of Chen Shui-bian’s Green governance. In the following year, a graft and corruption case involving the Chen Shui-bian family erupted, eliciting the laying of siege on the Presidential Palace by the Red Shirt Army. Eleven bigwigs of the reform faction within the party, including Lee Wen-chung, Lin Cho-shui, and Shen Fu-hsiung, presented, one after another, critiques against Chen Shui-bian’s integrity and the party’s path, urging the party central to reform. Who knew, these people would be subsequently attacked by the deep Green, labeling them the "Eleven Bandits," and demanded that the DPP not nominate these people to run in the legislative elections. Later, Lee Wen-chung and Lin Cho-shui were forced to resign from their legislative seats, and Shen Fu-hsiung withdrew from the DPP in 2007.

The DPP right now is quiet, the reason being no others, that is, when seeing no substitute afield, the whole party wants to galvanize unity to help Tsai Ing-wen for "re-election." This mentality reflects the DPP’s three fatal blind spots: First, power rules supreme: wanting to grasp political power, controlling state resources, but not asking itself what kind of services the government has provided the people, or what kind of life the government has brought the people. Second, following routine without thinking about improvement and opportunism: only a political party that has lost self-confidence would let its illness worsen and not seek active treatment. Supporting Tsai Ing-wen for her re-election bid and not readjusting her path is fundamentally a gambler’s mentality, using the whole country as its bargaining chips. Third, the whole party is willing to fall to new depths: Tsai Ing-wen’s decision-making and leadership have been confirmed to have failed through the latest local races and plebiscite elections. However, the DPP still wants to follow her; this will only lead the path further from the target, allowing the entire party to be buried with her.

Now without the Eleven Bandits within the party, what we see is a timid party afraid to speak out and a uniform mouthpiece for the whole party; what is left is only a fuzzy picture of right and wrong, merits and demerits, as well as a vox populi obliterated by the party’s will. The disappearance of the Eleven Bandits is not only the disappearance of the DPP’s internal spirit of soul-searching, but also the beginning of the party’s self-erosion. It has been so proven that the New Tide Faction, audacious to speak out of yesteryear, now has become the principal accomplice of the Tsai government’s maladministration.

Attachment : none