Don't Use Sovereignty to Camouflage New Authoritarianism and Suffocate Taiwan's Democracy

Don't Use Sovereignty to Camouflage New Authoritarianism and Suffocate Taiwan's Democracy

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

January 22, 2020

 Translation of an Excerpt

From her victory speech to interviews granted to international media outlets, President Tsai has endlessly used two keywords to interpret the significance of election results: sovereignty and democracy. In fact, there was only one major melody in the entire election, that is the high-pitched "sense of losing one’s country", the sovereignty card employed to engage in mobilization of fear. After the election, Tsai Ing-wen, on the one hand, lambasted the PRC, through interviews with foreign media outlets, saying that "the price of invading Taiwan will be extremely great"; secondly, she promulgated the "Anti-Infiltration Bill" into law; thirdly, she released a “Tsai-Xi meeting” with premises. Anti-China sentiments are agitated, and democracy, on the other hand, is clouded with shadows. At this juncture, the Tsai government, which has again received the people’s mandate, should be more cautious and prudent, and not use the guise of sovereignty to camouflage new authoritarianism, thus suffocating Taiwan's democracy.

“The sense of losing one’s country" shifted the focus on the Tsai government’s domestic governance, such as hollowing out democracy, stagnating the economy, and breaking social security nets. Since proposing erecting a protective net for democracy and opposing the "Taiwan program for one country, two systems" at the beginning of last year, to the highhanded railroading of the "Anti-Infiltration Bill" at last yearend, a lot of things happened one after another: encouraging police officers to "check water meters" by giving points for their performance, using the control power to investigate judges and prosecutors, employing resources of the state to hire cyber warriors in the shadows, etc. The incidents violated the Constitution, abused powers, infringed on human rights, restricting freedom of speech, and creating a chilling effect. The entire year of the electoral campaign was a year, rarely seen in democratic countries, featuring anti-China electioneering maneuverings, Green terror governance, and new authoritarian construction engineering all proceeding at the same time.

With tense cross-Strait relations and the sensitive sovereignty issue, should democracy indeed have to give way? For the Tsai government, the practice of democracy is only a decoration on its sovereignty card, used to flirt with and win favors from the US, Japan and foreign media outlets. The louder the chanting for sovereignty, the more timid democracy becomes by intimidation. However, DPP legislators have started a witch hunt, wanting to erect custom-made formulations for violating the new law. They require all government agencies at various levels to have the obligation to take the initiative on filing charges, tantamount to that all government agencies have to transform into Dong Chang [Dong Chang is a Ming Dynasty secret police organization equivalent to the modern-day Gestapo.] For Tsai Ing-wen, were the 8.17 million votes instructions to return to humility, or a mandate to establish a new authoritarianism?

Tsai Ing-wen proposed "peace, parity, democracy, dialogue" as the four premises for a "Tsai-Xi meeting"; however, if lacking a common political foundation to re-establish mutual confidence, dialogue would be difficult to expect, peace would be difficult to keep, and sovereignty and dignity would very likely be impacted.

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