In the End, President Tsai Couldn’t Even Answer Her Own Test Paper Herself

  In the End, President Tsai Couldn’t Even Answer Her Own Test Paper Herself

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

October 11, 2017

 Translation of an Excerpt

The 106^th Double Tenth National Day of the Republic of China was a day filled with mixed feelings for the people. On this day, the Premier, who advocated the Taiwan independence discourse, was seated at the head of honored guests in the grand ceremony; many high-ranking officials who attended the occasion were not really interested at all in the displaying of the national flag or singing the national anthem; even state-run organizations such as the post office stopped displaying the national flag. Precisely because of this, the public, on the other hand, raised or displayed the national flag on their own, bringing forth a wave of zeal for the national flag. And as predicted, with regard to the changing tunes and flavors in cross-Strait relations, President Tsai Ing-wen did not deliver any remarks conducive to easing the stalemate, only playing the old tune of "four noes." She seemed to have fallen into a trap of her own making and could not extricate herself.

Tsai Ing-wen tossed out the "three new advocacies"-- "new situation, the new questionnaire and the new model"-- at the anniversary of her inauguration last May 20, and advocating that the two sides should have new relationship of cooperation. At this National Day celebration, President Tsai reiterated the "four noes" principle, "our goodwill will not change, commitments will not change, will not succumb to pressure, and will not return to the old path of confrontation," urging the leaders of the two sides to jointly seek a new model of interaction. The "four noes", in actuality, was the old tune that Tsai Ing-wen had played at last year's National Day celebrations, still spinning en loco a year later. Thus, we can see that from the "three news" to the "four noes" have all been caught in a quagmire; President Tsai could not write the answer herself to the “new questionnaire” she had proposed.

The dilemma of Tsai Ying-wen lies not in the fact that the other side of the Strait had no intention to respond to her urgings; her greater dilemma is that she stirred up a mess in the new cross-Strait situation with her obstinacy, and she no longer knows how to clean it up. This predicament underscores her embarrassing situation as Lai Ching-te in one stroke captured the pulpit for Taiwan independence. Lai Ching-te's Taiwan independence narrative not only tore up Tsai's incomplete answer sheet to the questionnaire, but also destroyed the opportunity to freely answer the questionnaire or make pragmatic adjustments.

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