With People in One’s Heart, It Won’t Be Sheer Sloganeering from the Mouth

 With People in One’s Heart, It Won’t Be Sheer Sloganeering from the Mouth

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

January 3, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

President Tsai’s New Year’s Day message was disappointing. The strategy of her talk was "releasing on the one hand and contracting on the other." On the part of "releasing," she proclaimed that she would turn the tax revenue collected in excess into dividends to be distributed to the underprivileged for sharing, and through this winning the people's hearts. On the part of "contracting," she used "four musts" to strike a more hardened posture in cross-Strait relations. Externally, she refused, under the pretext of sovereignty and self-identity, to engage in dialogues with Mainland China; domestically, she drew a red line in the matter of cross-Strait city-to-city interchanges by the local governments. We can only say that it was arrogance upon arrogance as Tsai Ing-wen used such an attitude to respond to the DPP’s defeat in the year-end local elections, fundamentally not putting vox populi in her heart.

Ko Wen-je made it with a simple phrase "the two sides of the Strait are like family"; why did Tsai Ing-wen, however, force him to retract it? The Blue camp smoothly managed cross-Strait peaceful interchanges with the "1992 Consensus"; why did Tsai Ing-wen, however, insist on forsaking it, while using her own "maintaining the status quo," which had obviously been difficult to maintain, to stage a show? Tsai Ing-wen was disappointing not because her attitude toward Beijing was overly hardened, but because, knowing full-well that Taiwan’s vox populi no longer supported her cross-Strait policies, she, however, was oblivious to the people’s inner voices, minding only about maintaining her political face and her political ideals that had no future. As President, if not thinking of looking squarely at the people's wishes, pragmatically resolving the country's predicament, but rather chanting the never-changing slogans, how could she still expect people’s support?

The greatest paradox of cross-Strait relations is that its keynote depends on the powers-that-be who have lost the people’s support. Tsai Ing-wen’s support ratings have plunged to below 20%; with such a feeble standing, it would probably be difficult to remedy with throwing tens of billions of NT dollars, the co-called dividends from tax collections in excess. Moreover, she still has no intention of revising her cross-Strait, energy, economic and other various public policies to return to the right track, not even able to hammer out the new Cabinet line-up, only even more underscoring her inability in governance and putting the cart before the horse.

Viewed from the standpoint of the Taiwan people, the public at this time do not need a leader very adept at "proclaiming stances," but one capable of "solving problems." Viewed from this prospective, Tsai Ing-wen, very adept at making her stances known with a high-profile, is not solving problems, but rather creating problems.

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