With Disintegration of Populus, Tsai Ing-wen Is Going to Take Taiwan into Perilous Waters

 With Disintegration of Populus, Tsai Ing-wen Is Going to Take Taiwan into Perilous Waters

 United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

May 4, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

The Dominican Republic cut diplomatic ties with our country; the Tsai government immediately made two stereotyped responses: one is condemning Mainland China for oppression, accusing it of unilaterally changing the status quo; the other is urging countrymen to unite, demanding that the ruling and opposition parties lay down their prejudices and face the outside world in unison. Such a mode of responses with no changes at all, in fact, cannot call up countrymen’s fury, instead, it only underscores that the government is at its wits’ end. What is more, what can be blamed is that when Tsai Ing-wen called in a loud voice that "the interests of the state are greater than those of political parties," she was not mindful that the one that pushed the country into a perilous state was precisely the DPP government under her leadership.

Following Panama and São Tomé and Príncipe, the Dominican Republic is the third country to terminate diplomatic relations with us in two years. The Dominican Republic has maintained seventy-seven years of diplomatic ties with us; this explains that it is not exactly a diplomatic opportunist that “dances to the tune of money.” However, from the responses following the last three breaks of diplomatic ties, it may be seen that Tsai Ing-wen had no intention for self-reflection, choosing to retort with words of bravado and continue to soldier on, without any traces of adjustments in policies or strategies. Of course, President Tsai may claim she was defending the nation's "dignity," but from another angle, she may in fact have reveled her inability to properly care for people's welfare and the "interests" of the nation.

This time, Beijing snatched the Dominican Republic; it must have done so after meticulous calculations and picking, thus laying its hands on this diplomatic partner of 77 years of history. Civilities aside, the main objective of the rupture of diplomatic ties this time, in conjuncture with cruises of PRC planes and ships around Taiwan, is a strike directed against Premier Lai Ching-te, who repeatedly touted himself as a "Taiwan independence worker." Tsai Ying-wen has frequently claimed that cross-Strait policy was based on "maintaining the status quo"; however, with regard to Premier Lai’s derailed words and deeds, she has never publicly corrected or privately dissuaded him, so that people had to feel that she was deliberately unleashing Premier Lai to show force, underscoring that her own cross-Strait policy was shifting to the extreme margins. Such provocations have met with reprisals of rupture of diplomatic ties; they have also brought the country and the people to perilous, uncharted waters. Nevertheless, we don’t see that the Tsai government has an iota of will for soul-searching.

If Tsai Ing-wen no longer cares about cross-Strait relations and even doesn’t mind tearing apart Taiwan’s society and the people’s feelings, and still wants to continue to hate China, may we ask: in the end, what is she going to use to call for solidarity of the people in concerted efforts to face the outside world?

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